


Picking up the pieces

by mrstater, vladnyrki



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: F/M, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-29
Updated: 2014-09-14
Packaged: 2018-01-02 23:38:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 25,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1063037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrstater/pseuds/mrstater, https://archiveofourown.org/users/vladnyrki/pseuds/vladnyrki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Freshly divorced, Richard Carlisle crosses the path of the Crawleys once again, and finds himself reluctantly dragged into their drama. Against all reason, he accepts to help Mary once more to pick up the pieces that Matthew's death and other events left behind, rebuilding his own life in the process. S4 AU. Written by MrsTater and Vladnyrki.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Smoke screens

So here's another product of MrsTater's and my crazy minds. Exploring the untold story behind s2 was not enough for our curious minds so we launched this s4 AU. Hope you'll like it! Just like for _Cliveden conversations_ , the updates will be quite erratic, so bear with us!  
  
 _London, spring 1922_  
  
Around Fleet Street, the passer-by was usually stunned by the never-ending buzz of activity. In the morning, boys in knickers and caps received stacks of fresh newspapers from the back alley warehouses and ran to their designated corners. Men in business suits, tailored and cheap alike, walked in and out the Victorian buildings, mingling for a moment before reaching the shelters of their floors or desks. Secretaries stepped down from the busses, chatting animatedly, sharing the latest gossips before scattering to their respective buildings. In the evening, the same ballet started again, in reverse.  
  
To the innocent observer, the Victorian façades naturally hid the heart of Fleet Street, each building standing strong and tall like a castle of ancient times, reigning on Lord Northcliffe's or Lord Beaverbrook's territories, or the Upstart-from-Glasgow-slums' smaller one. However, the inhabitants of this strange country that was Fleet Street knew better. The real local life blossomed in small restaurants and smoky pubs in which true negotiations were held and informants interviewed. In some places, a kind of truce existed between the populations from rival buildings. Those were the places where an informal dinner could disarm regrettable tensions between editors from the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, the places where information could be shared, almost freely, always for a price, high or low.  
  
Then, there were the more private places, monopolized by the members of one gang exclusively, where strangers were barely tolerated and regarded with suspicion. The Smoking Cat was this kind of pub, almost as welcoming as a home to Richard Carlisle. Since the divorce, this was one of the only places where he could have a meal or a drink without casting suspicious glances around him, in search of too observing eyes.  
  
His hurried wedding to Russian heiress Nadia Dimitrova Vronski a few months after the break-up of his year-long engagement to Lady Mary Crawley had not been deemed newsworthy. In fact, people had proved more curious about the hurried wedding of his ex-fiancée to the heir of the Grantham title. His recent divorce, on the other hand, had seemed to transform him into the main focus of Londonian gossips. Apparently, a cuckolded press baron was so much fun to talk about, especially when his now ex-wife lived the big life her family and she had to abandon in Russia back in 1917 at his expense.  
  
In this context, the Smoking Cat, its phonograph always playing New Orleans tunes, its incomparable choice of whisky and rum, and its Caribbean gastronomy – the owner had lived two decades in the British Antilles before returning to the London smog – provided the perfect locale to seek tranquility and privacy before going home to his two year-old son, and devise plans to get his shaken empire under control once again.  
  
If there was a bastard able to use a costly divorce to his advantage, Richard was that bastard, and when Fleet Street would remember that fact, he would have succeeded in the most audacious coup d'Etat he had organized since the one that gave him the control of the Evening Times fifteen years ago.  
  
 An arm raised above the crowd, motioning him to come closer, and Richard waved back at the bunch of men settled by the bar, a smile forming on his lips as he lit another cigarette. Everyday like the one before, he could count on the gang of not-so-young-anymore Turks that had followed his crazy plans for the last two decades.

  
  
**So here's another product of MrsTater's and my crazy minds. Exploring the untold story behind s2 was not enough for our curious minds so we launched this s4 AU. Hope you'll like it! Just like for Cliveden conversations, the updates will be quite erratic, so bear with us!  
  
London, spring 1922  
  
Around Fleet Street, the passer-by was usually stunned by the never-ending buzz of activity. In the morning, boys in knickers and caps received stacks of fresh newspapers from the back alley warehouses and ran to their designated corners. Men in business suits, tailored and cheap alike, walked in and out the Victorian buildings, mingling for a moment before reaching the shelters of their floors or desks. Secretaries stepped down from the busses, chatting animatedly, sharing the latest gossips before scattering to their respective buildings. In the evening, the same ballet started again, in reverse.  
  
To the innocent observer, the Victorian façades naturally hid the heart of Fleet Street, each building standing strong and tall like a castle of ancient times, reigning on Lord Northcliffe's or Lord Beaverbrook's territories, or the Upstart-from-Glasgow-slums' smaller one. However, the inhabitants of this strange country that was Fleet Street knew better. The real local life blossomed in small restaurants and smoky pubs in which true negotiations were held and informants interviewed. In some places, a kind of truce existed between the populations from rival buildings. Those were the places where an informal dinner could disarm regrettable tensions between editors from the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, the places where information could be shared, almost freely, always for a price, high or low.  
  
Then, there were the more private places, monopolized by the members of one gang exclusively, where strangers were barely tolerated and regarded with suspicion. The Smoking Cat was this kind of pub, almost as welcoming as a home to Richard Carlisle. Since the divorce, this was one of the only places where he could have a meal or a drink without casting suspicious glances around him, in search of too observing eyes.  
  
His hurried wedding to Russian heiress Nadia Dimitrova Vronski a few months after the break-up of his year-long engagement to Lady Mary Crawley had not been deemed newsworthy. In fact, people had proved more curious about the hurried wedding of his ex-fiancée to the heir of the Grantham title. His recent divorce, on the other hand, had seemed to transform him into the main focus of Londonian gossips. Apparently, a cuckolded press baron was so much fun to talk about, especially when his now ex-wife lived the big life her family and she had to abandon in Russia back in 1917 at his expense.  
  
In this context, the Smoking Cat, its phonograph always playing New Orleans tunes, its incomparable choice of whisky and rum, and its Caribbean gastronomy – the owner had lived two decades in the British Antilles before returning to the London smog – provided the perfect locale to seek tranquility and privacy before going home to his two year-old son, and devise plans to get his shaken empire under control once again.  
  
If there was a bastard able to use a costly divorce to his advantage, Richard was that bastard, and when Fleet Street would remember that fact, he would have succeeded in the most audacious coup d'Etat he had organized since the one that gave him the control of the Evening Times fifteen years ago.  
  
An arm raised above the crowd, motioning him to come closer, and Richard waved back at the bunch of men settled by the bar, a smile forming on his lips as he lit another cigarette. Everyday like the one before, he could count on the gang of not-so-young-anymore Turks that had followed his crazy plans for the last two decades.

 

***

  
The Smoking Cat was a far cry from any establishment Edith was accustomed to as the Earl of Grantham's daughter, but every night couldn't be the Criterion, she supposed. With Michael soon bound for Germany, she was grateful for every moment they could spend together, no matter where that might occur.  
  
Truth be told, there was something rather appealing about sitting in a darkened corner of a pub with Michael after work, of not dressing for dinner-and of course you couldn't get food like this at the Criterion, or any other restaurant her mother might have approved of. This is how the other half live, she thought, sipping a hearty spiced soup that was just the thing after their unseasonably brisk walk over from the Sketch office; she was beginning to wonder if this half didn't live better than hers.  
  
At the moment, the other half included a familiar face at the bar with sharp cheekbones, piercing blue eyes beneath a strong brow, and a head of thinning blond hair.  
  
"My God," murmured Edith, giving Michael a nudge beneath the table with her knee, "is that Sir Richard Carlisle?"  
  
"Hmm?" Michael looked up rather distractedly in the direction she indicated. "Oh, I suppose it is."  
  
He went back to his newspaper, but Edith was intrigued. It wasn't such a great surprise to bump into the publisher on Fleet Street, the site of his empire, but it was odd to see her sister's former-fiance for the first time since their tumultuous engagement had come to its end.  
  
Since Mary's husband had died.  
  
Since Sir Richard's own recent divorce.  
  
Funny, that was the first time she'd even heard he'd been married-and a low-profile wedding was not at all what she'd expected from him when his plans with Mary had been for a spectale more suited to royalty than an earl's daughter. Having seen him only in the context of Downton, she took the opportunity now to observe, in a habitat she supposed was more natural to him that her ancestral home-a notion she understood more than she had at the time, feeeling her ancestral was not even the correct context for her.  
  
The thought of royalty did stick in her head as she watched him lean against the bar, a cigarette clutched between his fingers with a lazy elegance that seemed so peculiar to a self-made man, slightly aloof from his three companions.  
  
"The king and his court," Edith said, and brought her soup spoon to her lips.  
  
Michael looked up with a laugh. "What, Carlisle?" He twisted in his chair to look back again, then turned back to Edith with a smile on his lips and a glimmer in his eyes. "More like a gang leader."  
  
Edith took another look at the foursome at the bar; they were all dressed well enough, but there was a certain scruffiness to the three strangers-collars undone, neckties loosened, waistcoats open, days' growth of stubble-that did make Michael's description seem apt. She couldn't hear what they were saying, but the three appeared to have a playful rapport with their leader even as they looked on him with unmistakable admiration.  
  
"Fagin and his little band of ruffians?" she said. "How Dickensian. Do you know them all?"  
  
Michael had, of course, been in Sir Richard's employ, the Sketch having belonged to him before Michael bought it.  
  
"Not well. They all came over together from Glasgow together, and weren't known for welcoming outsiders into the inner circle. Tremendous egos, the lot of them-Carlisle's the only one who can keep them all in line."  
  
"Because his is the biggest ego of all?"  
  
Michael gave her his lopsided grin over his beer. "Exactly."  
  
Another companionable silence settled over them, during which Edith amused herself watching the Glasgow Gang.  
  
"What do you imagine they're plotting?"

 

***

  
"Finally escaped Miss Field's evil clutches?" Pete Inzaghi, his star caricaturist, mused as he poured himself a very generous glass of rum. The night was still young yet his New York accent sounded heavier already.  
  
"What a surprise," Duncan Reid, editor of Richard's main sports paper, said in a low groaning tone. "Somebody who likes a job well-done would necessarily be evil to you, wouldn't they Pete? By the way where are my drawings? I remember you promised me..."  
  
"I'm imagining them as we speak, my friend. I just need inspiration." For dramatic effect, the artist raised his dark eyebrows, and smoothed his mustache, an amused smile lifting the corner of his mouth. For their Yankee friend, inspiration was always fueled by an unreasonable amount of booze. Sometimes, Richard had to wonder if the outlandish salary he paid Pete was really what kept the man in London, and not the tiny little fact that alcohol was not prohibited in Britain.  
  
"Personally, I'm more interested in MacIdiot's promise," a pair a harsh blue eyes caught Richard's attention.  
  
Always trust Saul Cohen to ask the annoying questions.  
  
"Which one? Not to wear a kilt at your daughter's wedding?" Richard feigned innocence.  
  
The clearly not amused stare his man investor shot back at him told him that the man was beyond pleasantries. Saul was a walking paradox, a disheveled man with rebellious strands of greying hair who organized his business with maniacal care, a millionaire who complained about the price of a pint of guinness, a Jew who could claim to have deeper roots in Glasgow than any of them, since the day he had found an old document attesting that the count of Argyll owed a hundred pounds to one of Saul's ancestors, a certain Solomon Cohen, back in the fourteenth century. Since then, the Cohen dynasty had ridden the wheel of fortune, endured persecusions and confiscations, enjoyed great influence and power. Saul was their latest representant, a man who preferred the shadows of power to the glaring sun of responsibility.  
  
"Back in January, you told us not to worry when you abandoned your bloody shares in the Telegraph, and asked us for two months of our patience…."  
  
Richard took a sip of his whisky, enjoying the bitter taste of the Talisker. It was high time to put his newest plan into motion.  
  
"Well, Mr. Shylock, two months were the time Keith and I needed to review all the contracts of the Telegraph crew, and check that all the people that count do have a personal contract with my company, and not with the paper."  
  
Blue eyes shone gleefully. Nothing satisfied Saul like the perspective of a good game of chess. This was how Richard had pulled him on board in the first place, providing him with a new challenge.  
  
"And that's the case?"  
  
"Yep," Richard asked for another glass of whisky, and took a cigar out from his inside pocket, the kind reserved for celebration.  
  
"So, when does the Exodus start?" Duncan wondered, always impatient. "Shall I have the pleasure of observing the first effects before I go back home to mind the shop?"  
  
Home was Glasgow, and always would be. That was where everything started.  
  
"When I notify the Telegraph editor that I won't work for them anymore," Pete poured himself another glass.  
  
"That's to say a week from now, when we'll announce our new publication, with Nicky Vassiliev at the helm." Keith spoke for the first time. Until this moment, the man had remained silent. Actually, he was the quiet member of the heteroclite bunch of friends Richard had collected around him years after years. Most of time, he was perfectly content with sipping his drink while smiling at his companions' antics, his narrowed eyes bright with silent mischief. Frivolous banter was not his thing, but he swam in technicalities and commercial strategies like a shark in high waters.  
  
"Vassiliev?" Saul whistled between his teeth, his blue eyes bright with childlike mischief. "You really aren't the spiteful type, are you, McIdiot?"  
  
Richard played dumb, decided not to let his friends drag him to this particular place.  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Isn't he the one who introduced you to a certain blonde beauty?"  
  
"Didn't twist my arm either," Richard admitted grudgingly. He had behaved like a blind idiot back then, and he more than deserved this new nickname, as tiring as it was. "Considering he's a convinced Menchevik, I couldn't guess that his ex-girlfriend would turn out to be a closet Tsarist nostalgic."  
  
Richard could feel his ears turn red, and he had not drunk enough to be able to blame it on the whisky or the stuffy atmosphere. Pensively, he stroke his newly bearded chin before replying less animatedly.  
  
"And," he began, elbowing his star caricaturist in the ribs. "If some awkward fool had kept his mouth shut about my personal involvement in the press campaign that had led to the end of the British intervention in Russia back in 1919, I most probably be heading home to my shaky family right now, not sitting here in a crowded pub."  
  
To his credit, Pete looked almost apologetic as he drained his glass.  
  
"So, Vassiliev will be at the helm, and with the addition of Pete, sweet talking most of the Telegraph crew to switch sides will be easy as pie." You could always trust Keith to stir a conversation back into the right direction. "If my projections are right, we should be able to attract the best crew from the Telegraph before the end the year, and within two years, with only the Conservative idiots left, the paper will sink as surely as the Titanic did. They'll run to Northcliffe and the Daily Mail, and we shall get our paper back."  
  
Saul raised an admiring eyebrow and whistled between his teeth. He had to. Keith's projections were always accurate, and generally quite pessimistic, just to be cautious.  
  
"Where do I sign?"  
  
Saul Cohen was the best investor in the world. He hated Northcliffe's guts, for reasons only he knew, and he loved a good adventure.

 

***

  
"If he's really the ruthless player we always believed him to be," answered Michael, "he's strategizing how to get back in the game. That divorce cost him much more than a chance at a peerage, you know."  
  
"I don't know," Edith regarded him with some surprise. "Do you mean his political reputation because of the Tsarist ties?" She had done a column on the plight of disenfranchised Russian aristocrats, though it had not been one of her more popular articles.  
  
"Well there's that, of course, but I was referring to the financial settlement."  
  
This was somewhat of a let down. "I can't imagine a man like Richard Carlisle would come out too badly in a divorce."  
  
"That's the thing, though, he did. There's a child-which rather explains why the marriage occurred in the first place, so quickly on the heels of his break with your sister."  
  
"Indeed." Edith sipped her wine, and shook her head. "What a double standard. If he were a woman who married soon after a whirlwind affair, it would have been all over the papers."  
  
"Yes, well…" Michael shifted in his seat. "He's been made a fool of twice now, in as many years. That's a little more newsworthy. Especially when he's paying for it with a large number of shares in his papers, and his estate."  
  
"Do you mean Haxby?" The surprising turns in this story never ceased.  
  
"I suppose so?"  
  
"He bought it for Mary, when they were engaged."  
  
"Ah," said Michael, with something like a smirk on his normally mild, kind smile. "Salt in the wounds. Anyway, people say he didn't want the boy being raised as another bitter Tsarist nostalgic, and those were his wife's terms. Both of them got what they wanted, Carlisle got the boy, and his wife got a chance at recreating her old life."  
  
"I see."  
  
Edith's gaze wandered once more to the bar, where Sir Richard hunched, smoking pensively as his gang, as Michael called them, talked to each other around him, laughing frequently. She thought how often he had been alone at Downton, not really a part of the group, and how little effort had been made by any of them to welcome him as part of the family. She had been as guilty as anyone of operating under the assumption that he was only using Mary as the next rung up his social ladder, but now she wasn't so sure. If a peerage was all that mattered to him, there were lots of arrangements he could have come to without resorting to a divorce that would not only cost him financially, but be a nigh impassible social barrier to overcome. And apparently he'd done it for his son?  
  
"I think the real story here," Edith said, "is that Sir Richard is looking for the same thing all of us are."  
  
Michael leaned back in his chair, regarding her with his head tilted. "You see him as somehow a tragic romantic figure?"  
  
"I don't know about that." But she did know something about the humiliation of being jilted, publicly. Cheeks burning but jaw set, she slid out of the booth. "I'm going to go speak to him."

 

***

  
"So, Richard…" Duncan dragged his stool closer to him, an unlit cigarette stuck between his clenched teeth, an habit that gave the sports editor his trademark cocky and wolfish grin.  
  
Involuntarily, Richard felt his shoulder tense in anticipation. This kind of casual introduction was always followed by the craziest and least reasonable demands. What was the guy up to this time? Richard looked up for some help, but, besides them, Keith was lost to him, entranced in his debate about which restaurant in Glasgow served the best cranachan. As if to prove a point, Pete was poking Keith's stomach - testimony to the man's fondness for good old Scottish cuisine and beer - impertinently, a sure sign of the caricaturist's growing intoxication.  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"It appears that this automobile race in Le Mans is a done deal for next year."  
  
"Looks like it. Good for the Frenchies, they put forth great effort into this," he answered diplomatically.  
  
"I want the exclusity on this."  
  
How predictable.  
  
Richard took out another cigarette and snapped the case closed sharply. He lit up and tried not to grimace. After the strong aroma of the cigar, the cigarette left a foul taste on his tongue.  
  
"Let me see if I understood clearly. You want me to let you loose on this topic, right? Because, with exclusivity comes total freedom, doesn't it?"  
  
His friend had the decency not to deny.  
  
Richard breathed deeply.  
  
"Remember the last time you asked for total exclusivity, Duncan?" he exhaled the smoke from his lungs as he spoke.  
  
"Not my fault if you misjudged the impact of the Olympics' return would have on the public. The papers I'm responsible of were in top form and brought you loads of money."  
  
Richard could not deny it, but he would be caught dead before admitting it aloud, in front of Duncan of all people. To be totally honest, he had missed the ball on that one, not being able to recognize how much the scarred people all around Europe needed this kind of futile event to feel really at peace, at last, less than two years after the armistice. The fact that he had recently learnt that his casual mistress was around two months pregnant at the time was no excuse.  
  
"And I thank you for that. But as a publisher, I have to think about the whole group, and I can't forget you almost sinked the Herald with your stunts." Richard took a sip from his glass of whisky, the third or maybe the fourth in the evening. It was high time to go back home. Before that, he had to make a point, though. "Do you remember the time before last?"  
  
"The Tour de France was the big thing, then! How could I ever predict that some maniac would shoot at the Archiduke?" Reid protested in a protesting growl before shrugging resignatedly.  
  
Richard could not help but smile. In the strangest way, the summer of 1914 had not the same meaning for Duncan as for the vast majority of Europeans. The man could be so close-minded at times! In all Europe, people only read papers to learn about the latest news, to know if peace had been saved or not.  
  
But not Duncan.  
  
The man had bet on the promotion of the Tour de France 1914 and focused all of his editorial efforts to this end. In the beginning it had worked, papers sold so well that reprints were necessary. But as the crisis grew bigger and bigger, as the threat loomed closer and closer, people forgot all about the cycling epic, and the sales dropped drastically, never to go up ever again. Then, for the following four years, all that mattered was the bloodbath on the continent. Duncan's paper neevr recovered form that blow, and for the first time of his career, Richard was forced to abandon one of his papers. Duncan Reid lived, breathed, ate and drank sports. In peacetime, it was his strength. When the political context became overwhelming, it was his biggest flaw as an editor. As the European crisis grew more accute day after day, he had remained deaf to what he called political shenanigans, only interested in his damn Tour de France, unaware of the fear that submerged every man and woman in Britain, in Europe. Actually, the only ones who had lived through the summer of 1914 without being conscious of what had been at stake then were probably Mary and her idiotic late husband.  
  
"At the very least, can you get the BBC on board? Road racing is just made for radio-diffusion, you know," Reid asked again, less vehemently.  
  
Now, that was a reasonable request, at last.  
  
"Why not?" Richard answered amicably before his smile froze on his face as he recognized a familiar blonde walking to their group.  
  
Just his luck.  
  
The evening had started out so well.

 

***

  
The look on Sir Richard's face when their eyes met across the pub made Edith stop in her tracks, nearly resulting in a collision with a barmaid carrying a tray of drinks. Pleasure was clearly not the emotion he felt on seeing her, and for a moment she considered turning back. But then, just as quickly, he masked the expression with a bland smile, and he rose from his stool. She smiled, too, and continued her approach.  
  
"Sir Richard," she said, reaching out to shake his hand. "I hope I'm not interrupting," she added, noting the curious faces of his three companions, "but I saw you sitting over here and couldn't pretend I hadn't. It's been a while. I hope you're well?"  
  
Well?  
  
Considering who the man following you like an obedient pet is, you perfectly know how not well I am.  
  
Idiot.  
  
The effort not to growl an insulting answer and turn his attention back to his friends was even greater than the one he had needed to form a smile.  
  
"Lady Edith, what a pleasant surprise," he replied instead, cringing inwardly as soon as the words lefts his lips. Behind him, he could feel four pair of far too amused eyes. These guys' interest in his private life was getting really disturbing. "Congratulations on your column," he added politely, casting a furious glance at Pete who was cackling as he took a sip from his glass of whisky.  
  
When had his life turned into some kind of vaudeville for his friends' amusement?  
  
Though she suspected he didn't entirely mean it, the pleasantries must be exchanged. Why had she thought speaking to him would be a good idea? One fleeting moment of sympathy, and here she was, being laughed at by Sir Richard Carlisle's cohorts.  
  
"Thank you," she said. "Who'd have thought one letter to the Times editor would lead to a job at the Sketch?"  
  
"Journalism is full of beautiful stories like that," he replied as amicably as possible. Edith being Edith, chances were high that she would take his words the wrong way, especially with the four idiots contemplating the scene gleefully. She already looked as if she had the impression they were mocking her, not him.  
  
The Crawley girls and their self-centeredness...  
  
"Talent, opportunity and someone willing to bet on you," he enumerated, counting on his fingers as he spoke, to clarify his opinion.  
  
This could be applied to Edith's situation, and anyone who did not know Michael Gregson would swallow the myth. However, people in the know were perfectly conscious that the talented Earl's daughter only got the job because of one of Gregson's insane bets - the man was able to bet to his very last possession when he had the feeling an idea, or a game of cards, might work - and the fact he was clearly infatuated with her.  
  
"The Holy Trinity, as we say," Keith was the first to interfere, his eyes fixed on Gregson.  
  
Edith didn't care for the way Richard's friend was looking at Michael, shrewd newspaperman's eyes narrowed, and she wasn't sure whether Richard himself meant his complimentary words, or was making fun of her. Nevertheless, she tried to respond like the well-bred lady she was: "If only my parents only realized there was a religious component, they might be a little more open to having a journalist in the family."  
  
The man who'd made the joke chuckled, politely, but the sniggers of the other three as they hunched over the bar once more were anything but.  
  
"If only Richard had worked that angle when he was to be the journalist in the family," muttered one with an American accent and a compact, muscular build, to his lanky companion with thinning grey hair who smirked into his beer.  
  
"This unrepentant miscreant?" His companion went on, his blue eyes shining with cruel mischief. "Do you really think somebody in their right mind would swallow this kind of act? Well, some people do like to hear and see what they wish to hear and see, so… We'll never know."  
  
Jaw tensed, Edith inhaled sharply through her nose. She ought to go back to Michael, yet something kept her rooted to the floor in front of Sir Richard. If she wanted to be taken seriously in the newspaper world which, like the rest of the world, it seemed, was dominated by men, she couldn't very well hide behind coattails, could she?  
  
"Sir Richard," she said, "I haven't had the pleasure of meeting your partners in crime."  
  
Richard could not help being surprised by Edith's sharp reply and raised his eyes to observe the young woman who could have been his sister-in-law. Of course, there was still the typical trembling of the chin that betrayed her discomfort, the little frown that revealed her almost paralyzing self-consciousness, but he had to admit that Edithhad grown up considerably since he last saw her more than two years ago. Being jilted at the altar might have this effect, less painful maybe than divorce or widowhood, but more humiliating most probably and certainly as traumatizing. In the worst circumstances, the ugly duckling had not quite become a swan, but her independence, and the new fashions, seemed to suit her.  
  
"Of course, forgive my manners," he humoured her, his trademark apologetic smile forming on his lips like a bad habit - the kind of smile that said I'm sorry when his eyes remained unapologetic. He lit another cigarette before motionning behind him.  
  
"The two schoolboys by the bar answer respectively to the names of Pete Inzaghi and Saul Cohen. The latter is my main investor, and the heir of secular familiy tradition of seedy dealing in Scottish politics. As for Pete, I've brought him back from a trip to the United States before the war. He's the main caricaturist for most of my papers."  
  
Richard turned around to motion at his other companions.  
  
"These guys are Duncan Reid, our Mr. Sport, and Keith McDonald, my right hand, and sometimes left one, for as long as I can remember."  
  
"In other words, I'm d'Artagnan, and these ugly Scots are the Three Muskeeters." Pete was done cackling apparently, and had decided to present himself outlandishly, which was barely surprising, and display his most charming manners.  
  
To what end? Richard had the sneaky impression that even Pete did not quite know himself.  
  
As usual.  
  
Edith shook hands with all four men, keenly aware of her mixed feelings of amusement at their boyish camaraderie, and her wariness of it. Not only because of what she knew of Sir Richard, but because Michael showed no interest in speaking with his former colleagues. Was there more to the story than he was telling?  
  
"Well," she said, "much as I'd love to discuss which Dumas character Sir Richard best fits-"  
  
"Richelieu," Pete interrupted. "He likes to think he's Colbert the genius, but he's clearly Richelieu."  
  
Richard regarded him tolerantly, and Edith said, "I'd best get back to Mr. Gregson."  
  
"Ah, Michael, we used to know him well," said Saul.  
  
"Perhaps better than Lady Edith does," muttered Duncan.  
  
"Dear old Mickey, a funny guy, always ready to…" Pete added, with mock nostalgia.  
  
"Give him our regards," Richard interrupted the American hastily, in a tone that held nothing whatsoever of regard.  
  
Keith was still silent.  
  
Edith told them she would, and hastily made her way back to Michael, keenly aware of Richard's steady gaze at her back.  
  
The young woman was barely out of earshot when Keith wondered aloud: "So, what do you think? Is she a fool or a complete idiot?"  
  
"Isn't that a bit redundant?" Richard replied nonchalantly. If Edith Crawley was dumb enough to embark on a hopeless affair with a married man and a gambler, it was not his problem anymore. He went on: "As far as I know, it's no big secret that Mickey's wife's still breathing. Catatonic but alive."  
  
The Gregsons' story was a sad one, granted, but in Richard's mind, no amount of tragedy authorized a man to fool a gullible girl like that. Maybe the scars from the engagement of doom as Pete had dubbed it were rawer than he thought.  
  
Or maybe he simply had no tolerance for cheating bastards as a whole. He had many flaws, but not that one. After a moment of silent musing, he noticed piercing blue eyes studying him without even having the decency of doing it discretely.  
  
"No more Crawley drama, right?" Keith had this unnerving quality of reading people like an open book, his eyes openly dissecting his interlocutors' voices and body language as efficiently as Marie Curie's X-ray.  
  
"Have no fear, I've a full plate of Vronski drama."  
  
"Pity though," Pete interrupted their little aparté. "She's a good writer, and I hope Mickey's stupidity isn't going to scare her away from journalism when the ugly truth comes out. It would be a waste."  
  
Richard was tempted to agree with their resident Yankee, but he could feel Keith's silent hostility, thick as the London smog.  
  
"If she stops writing because of that, it would only prove she started for the wrong reasons." Duncan affirmed quite brutaly, unconsciouly providing Richard with an easy way out of the uncomfortable discussion.  
  
"True," he agreed before standing up and motioning to a waiter. It was their tradition. Richard always ended up with the bill. "Now, gentlemen, if you excuse me, there's an impatient boy who's waiting for his bedtime story."  
  
As Edith approached the table, Michael stood. "Well?" he said, a nervous smile twitching across his face.  
  
"That was certainly awkward."  
  
"Why do you think I didn't go over with you?"  
  
Edith arched her eyebrows at him as she resumed her seat. "I expected some due to his drama with Mary, but his friends hinted there was more to it than you just not being a member of their exclusive club. Care to enlighten me?"  
  
"Newspaper secrets? Hardly."  
  
She continued to regard him, and he frowned.  
  
"As to my personal life," he said, taking out his cigarette case and lighter, "I've been very up front with you from the start. Don't you think if I had anything else to tell you, my darling, that I would?"  
  
She shook herself; how could she have let the likes of Richard Carlisle and his band of merry men get to her? "Of course," she said, accepting a cigarette from him, then leaned over the table for him to light it.  
  
The ordinarily relaxing smoke did not entirely put her at ease.


	2. The same old story

_**London, summer of 1922**_  
  
Before Shawsie came into his life, Richard had always been wary of a wasted afternoon. Even on week-ends, he'd needed to do something: have a game of tennis, pay visits to friends or lovers, play chess with his father, run errands, finish late paperwork, devise business plans... He was a restless man who believed that lounging on deckchair on a sunny terrace, a half-finished book open on his knees was a utter waste of time. It was not that he could not enjoy those simple pleasures – he loved nothing more than stretching on the deck of his sailboat or the feeling of the late afternoon sun in the mountains. But he was simply unable to do nothing in London without immediately thinking about all the things he could do instead of fritter an afternoon away.  
  
Now, forgetting his current reading and letting himself be absorbed in the silent observation of the eighteen-month old boy's shenanigans was his favorite activity on a lazy Sunday afternoon.  
  
Since Shawsie had discovered the joys of running around on two legs, he had become a living nightmare for his nanny and a source of infinite marvel and amusement for Richard. This afternoon, the boy seemed keen to walk in his father's footsteps and succeed in his first daring climb-a grassy mound less than three feet high. The problem was that he was his father's son and stubbornly refused to walk along the flat slope, preferring the very slightly steeper side. For the fourth time now, he faced the obstacle and ran on wobbly legs, inevitably failing the attempt, ruining his white sailor suit with even more grass stains. Since he was his father's and his mother's son, the failure provoked another short-lived fit of rage.  
  
"That should be enough for today, Sir Richard," the nanny said sternly in her strongly accented English. "Mr. Alexander will hurt himself." She was already halfway across the grass to him.  
  
Richard had refused that his son be raised in the Vronski's bitter and entitled world, but he did not want Shawsie to grow up cut out from his Russian heritage either. Miss Mikhailkova was a very competent woman but they kept on disagreeing about what a proper education for a boy was.  
  
"Let him be," Richard interrupted her, not for the first time in the afternoon. "He needs to learn his limits on his own."  
  
Well, as long as he did not try to run through the rose bushes while chasing after his ball, which had granted him an alarmed reprimand from the nanny, and a sterner one from his father when he had protested against the first one.  
  
Miss Mikhailkova shot him a disapproving look, reminding him silently he should consider himself lucky that a nanny with such sterling references as hers had deigned to work for a divorced man, rich and powerful as he was.  
  
"His suit is ruined," she merely answered, her tone underlining the missing word. Again.  
  
"I think I can afford that kind of price for this little lesson."  
  
When Shawsie realized that neither of the adults would come to his rescue, he sobered up and, as suddenly as the urge of climbing the mound had taken him, he turned back and came back to his more age-appropriate toys scattered on the terrace.  
  
Lesson learned, for now.  
  
Inside the house, the ringing of a telephone resounded through the open windows, and Richard hoped it was not Keith, or Saul, or any of the Vronskis, or anyone important.  
  
His deckchair was far too comfortable, and watching Shawsie as he began a shaky pyramid of blocks doomed to fall down and provoke another fit of rage was far too amusing.

 

* * *

 

  
Mary had just hung up the telephone when a rap on the library door precipitated a heavy thump against it. She looked up from the desk to see it swing open enough for Sybbie to toddle through, followed by Tom with George squirming in his arms, clearly wishing to be on the floor with his cousin. Uncle Tom obliged, and with a happy squeal George scurried across the carpet on all fours.  
  
"Sorry to interrupt," Tom said, "but we were on our way outside and the children asked after you."  
  
"Sybbie did, anyway," said Mary as she got up from her chair as her niece barreled into her skirt, hugging her around the knees.  
  
Sybil's daughter been a chatterbox since her second birthday earlier in the summer, and while her own son babbled mama, it had no fixed definition yet, used to babble about anything from her to Isis to the ashtray he discovered the day before when he pulled up on the coffee table in the drawing room.  
  
"Hello, darling girl." Mary stooped to kiss and smooth the mop of unruly curls which refused to stay neatly contained beneath her hair ribbon.  
  
"Piggie!" Sybbie thrust out her dimpled hand and revealed clutched in it one of the toy pigs from the nursery farm set.  
  
"Yes, Auntie Mary has been dealing with the pigs all morning. And frankly I welcome the interruption."  
  
"Oink oink!"  
  
"Very good," Mary said. "What does the horse say?"  
  
"Horsey neigh!"  
  
Sybbie took off prancing around the Persian carpet, and George added his own attempts at equine sounds to the cacophany and crawled after her.  
  
"Wishful thinking?" said Tom, coming round the sofa as Mary picked up the cup of tea Carson had brought her earlier and she'd forgotten till now.  
  
"What I wouldn't give for an afternoon free to ride," she said. "There are times when I wonder why I didn't leave all the saving of the estate to you men after all."  
  
Tom grinned. "I can handle whatever else needs doing if you need me to."  
  
Swallowing the now tepid tea, Mary shook her head. "The children would be so disappointed if you didn't go out with them, and I've attended to everything except for a personal matter."  
  
"Can it be put off?"  
  
"It has been, unfortunately, for about ten days."  
  
Tom's brows knit, and she could see him mentally working his way back through the past week and a half. Her heart rose to her throat with the irrational fear that he might guess something near her secret, though when he darted out to catch Sybbie in the nick of time before she collided with the leg of one of the sofa side tables whilst looking back over her shoulder at George, she hoped briefly he might lose his train of thought.  
  
Alas, as he swung Sybbie up high, he said "Since the church bazaar?"  
  
"Just something one of the guests mentioned and I've been meaning to look into," she said, not untruthfully. "No no, Georgie!" Mary moved to prise the cord of one of Mama's favorite lamps from her son's grasp. He laughed and grabbed for it again, but abruptly his mood became a tearful one when she picked him up to carry him away from the tempting object.  
  
"All right, you two," said Tom. "Outside we go."  
  
"Side!" squealed Sybbie as he lowered her to the ground.  
  
"Better to rip off the plaster and be done with it," Tom said, and reached for George.  
  
Ordinarily Mary would be only too willing to let him deal with her son's tantrum, but it was a testimony to how little she looked forward to the task ahead of her that she kept hold of George, murmuring soothing words to him as she kissed his head. His soft brown hair was growing in quite thick, and would soon require its first trim.  
  
When she did relinquish him to his uncle, he stopped crying at once, babbling, "Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma!"  
  
"Typical," Mary said with a roll of her eyes, and Tom walked off with him, winking at her over his shoulder as he coaxed, "Say T-t-t-t-Tom."  
  
"Tom!" shouted Sybbie from the door.  
  
"Not you, you little pixie!"  
  
Mary continued to watch the library door for a moment after they had gone out, her smile gradually fading. Tom was right, she thought, and with a sigh she turned and strode back to the desk. Even so, the thought flitted through her mind that she might escape after all-he might not be at home. Relaxing hadn't exactly been his favorite weekend pastime, when she'd known him before.  
  
She picked up the telephone and said into the mouthpiece: "I need to put a call through to London, please. To Sir Richard Carlisle."

 

* * *

  
Inevitably, the shaky pyramid had crumbled the moment Shawsie tried to add a fifth block to his creation. However, this time, the expected cries of willful, stubborn rage did not come and, even more significantly, Shawsie did not start again as he adopted a sulky attitude.  
  
"You're getting tired, lad. It's time to go with Mrs. Mikhailkova and have a nap." Richard stood up from his deckchair to scoop his son in his arms.  
  
The boys' eyes immediately welled up with big tears and his bottom lip started to quiver as he shook his head and protested faintly, only confirming the adults in their opinion.  
  
"No nap!"  
  
"But you will," Richard replied patiently, passing the lively child to the nanny's waiting arms. "What is it, Brooks?" He addressed the servant who had just come out over the renewed protestations.  
  
"Lady Mary Crawley for you on the phone, Sir."  
  
As usual, the valet-turned-butler and personal secretary wore a unreadable expression. If he was surprised that a former fiancé was calling his now divorced employer, he surely did not show it. On the other hand, Richard had a hard time hiding his own surprise, stopping mid-movement, Shawsie still suspended in the air, struggling against the secure grasp, not yet in his nanny's arms. Earnest wailing shook Richard from his momentaneous surprise and he let Mrs. Mikhailkova take the boy upstairs for his nap.  
  
"I see. Did she say what she wanted?"  
  
"I'm afraid she didn't, Sir," Brooks answered, allowing himself to raise one eyebrow.  
  
With long strides, Richard crossed the living-room to take the call, his mind conjuring all the reasons, reasonable or extravagant, that would push Mary to call him after all this time. Did Edith's thing with Gregson already blow up? Did the Pamuk story get out from unexpected source? Worse, did the Vronskis already cause mayhem in Haxby?  
  
What the hell did she want from him?  
  
"Mary, it's been a long time," he answered, his voice not as pleasant as the greeting words necessitated. "What can I do for you?"  
  
After all, doing things for Lady Mary Crawley seemed to be his goal in life, as Saul put it in the most non diplomatic way years ago.  
  
Upstairs, Shawsie protested loudly against the cruel injustice of being forced to have a nap.  
  
On the other end of the telephone line, at Downton Abbey, Sybbie's happy squeals as she bounded to the front door echoed to Mary in the library. She was relieved for the moment's noise to collect herself after Richard's greeting. Though she'd braced for an awkward conversation, she realized there was simply no way to be prepared for the strangeness of a voice she'd last heard two and a half years ago and never expected to hear again rasping across two hundred miles of wire. Not to mention the fact that he knew, with so much time and distance between them, that she would only be calling for a favor.  
  
After all, calling Sir Richard Carlisle for favors had been almost the entire basis of their relationship, hadn't it? she thought, with the slightest twinge of guilt.  
  
"Richard," she said, by way of greeting, matching his cold courtesy. "I'm sorry to bother you at the week-end. If I'm interrupting anything, I'm happy to call back another time. It's just...well, I suppose you've read in the papers, about that man who was struck by a lorry in Piccadilly?"  
  
On a scale from one to ten, Richard thought, this was a good twelve of unexpected.  
  
"A knocked-down pedestrian in London, really?" He asked for clarification, digging his memory for anything that might have caught his attention.  
  
Traffic incidents were becoming more and more common in London, cars crashing into each other, striking cyclists and pedestrians… Besides the odd article full of concern about the public safety, these kinds of events barely attracted any attention from journalists anymore, and even less from the readers.  
  
Well, at least, if anything, Richard felt grateful that Mary did not waste any time in false pleasantries and stated her business immediately.  
  
If only she'd been that honest before…  
  
"You'll have to fill me up. Contrary to Yorkshire, casualties are becoming quite common here in London, you kn-"  
  
Damn.  
  
The words had left his lips and it was too late to take them back.  
  
"I'm sorry, I just mean, well, you know…" He was rambling and he hated that.  
  
"It's all right. I suppose I am associated with rather more traffic accidents than the average person." Mary replied stiffly, though she knew by the way he was rambling that Richard truly had mis-spoken, and had not meant to offend. "Certainly to Londoners such incidents must be beneath notice."  
  
She chafed her thumb against the stick microphone. Frankly, she was a little embarrassed that she hadn't considered before now that Richard would not at once know what she was referring to.  
  
"Perhaps you won't be able to help at all…"  
  
Her words trailed away with a sigh; now who was rambling?  
  
"The man in question-a Mr. Green-was valet to Lord Anthony Gillingham," she explained. "He's dead now. And I think there might be rather more to the story than falling in front of the lorry."  
  
Glancing to the door, afraid suddenly that someone might barge in unnannounced, she cupped her hand around the mouthpiece and lowered her voice.  
  
"I think he may have been pushed."  
  
Her thumb pressed harder into the base of the phone, and she held her breath, awaiting Richard's response. Would he be annoyed that she'd interrupted his weekend to pester him not only with trivialities, but with conspiracy theories, as well? Or, worse, amused?  
  
Richard took the mahogany chair by the console which his friend Charles McKintosh had designed for him, and settled comfortably, reaching for his cigarettes and the geometrical pewter ashtray by the telephone.  
  
This was going to be a quite long call.  
  
"Lord Gillingham's valet?" he repeated absently, buying time to collect his thoughts. So the rumors he had heard about the sudden break up of the Viscount with Mabel Lane Fox, and regular visits to Yorkshire were not that unfounded. "Do you want to bring justice for your suitor's valet?" he asked innocently, trying to keep the sarcasm out of his voice as much as he could.  
  
Only eighteen months of marriage had been long enough for Mary to adopt Crawley's dumb sense of nobility.  
  
 _No more Crawley drama, I hope._  
  
Richard knew he should put an end to this conversation quickly. If his gang or, God forbid, his father ever heard that the had accepted to help Mary again, he would never hear the end of it. Yet, for the first time in months, he felt relaxed and curious, and he had time to kill until Shawsie woke up from his nap, so he humoured his former fiancée once again.  
  
"If that's the case, I'm afraid I can't be of much help," he went on between two puffs of smoke as he lit his cigarette. "The man's death didn't raise much interest, the lorry driver didn't kill himself out of guilt unlike this accident near Fleet Street last month, the only policemen who went around the site of the accident were probably traffic peelers…"  
  
"On the contary," Mary replied through her teeth, jaw stiffening as much with her anger about the situation as with her irritation at Richard's dismissiveness. "Green got exactly what he deserved. I simply hope that justice won't be served by the wrong man."  
  
Think, think, think before you talk this time.  
  
Why would Mary want a man dead? Why would she ask him to put a lid on yet another potential scandal? Why would she take the risk to call him?  
  
Her voice was cold and harsh, with a slight tremor, which meant that this was a very serious matter, a serious personal matter. But she sounded vengeful, as only a witness, not a victim, could be. Besides, if anything serious had happened to Mary, the Earl of Grantham and the Dowager would have taken the matter into their own vengeful hands.  
  
That left only one solution. Mary wanted justice on someone's behalf.  
  
She said that Green was a valet… That meant downstairs, surely. There, only two people could ellicit such a reaction from Mary, Anna and Carson.  
  
Carson was a strong fellow, perfectly able to defend himself. And in the improbable situation in which he would not, Mrs Hughes would throttle anyone coming after the butler. That left only Anna.  
  
Anna, almost a sister to Mary.  
  
Anna, married to an ex-convict, and a former soldier who had taken part into the bloody Boer War.  
  
A man for whom Richard had corrupted a judge to get his head out of the awaiting noose.  
  
 _No more Crawley drama, right?_  
  
No such luck.  
  
"Well, if I may be totally honest, bandying your theories around isn't exactly the best way to keep this kind of secret… secret," he finally answered, carefully choosing his words. "As far as the outside world is concerned, this is only a sad traffic accident. And this Green did nothing to deserve to be hit by a lorry."  
  
Mary released a long breath, though it did little to relieve the tightness in her chest. She was glad Richard was not present to see her as she leaned over the desk, cradling her forehead in her hand, fingertips pressed into her throbbing temples.  
  
He was right, of course-and she wasn't entirely certain why she had phoned him, what she had expected him to do. Perhaps precisely because it must be secret, and of everyone she knew, nobody was better at keeping secrets than Richard. Ironically. Certainly he had kept more than a few pertaining to Anna's husband, in particular. His angry words that night when she'd told him it was over, she was dissolving their engagement, came back to her:  
  
"And why do the papers leave you alone over Bates? Why has there been nothing linking him to the great Earl of Grantham?"  
  
"I suppose you stopped it."  
  
"With threats, bribes, calling in favors, yes I stopped it."   
  
He'd said the secrecy wouldn't hold if she threw him over, yet even through Bates' months of confinement no more about the accused murderer's ties with the Earl of Grantham had emerged in the papers than her own with the Turkish attache's had. Even after everything, she harbored no doubt that she could trust him.  
  
"It's a terrible secret to bear," she said, at length.  
  
How had Anna muddled through beneath its weight for so long? How would she, beneath the added burden of suspicion that Bates had done something, however just, however justifiable, that threatened once again to take him from her forever, when she needed him more than ever?  
  
Mary's chest ached. She wouldn't wish that loss on any woman.  
  
"I'm sorry to burden you with it, Richard. I know you've enough on your mind."  
  
After their parting, Mary had made it clear that her former fiance was not to be a topic of discussion at Downton, and her family had acquiesced. They all-including Matthew-thought that chapter of her life was too painful to revisit, and they were not entirely wrong-thoughin truth Mary was as pained by her own conduct as by Richard's.  
  
The taboo had not, however, stopped Edith from almost gleefully relaying the gossip she had learned about him on her most recent excursion to London: that after a shotgun wedding to an exiled Russian aristocrat, she had divorced him, and it had cost him dearly, in every way possible-including, to Papa's chagrin, Haxby Park.  
  
"Congratulations on your son," she said. "I hadn't heard till Edith bumped into you. You must be very proud."  
  
As surprising and unexpected the turn of the conversation was, it showed that Mary had caught his meaning, which was a good sign, for everybody concerned. The less they even talked about it, the better off everybody would be in the end. He followed her lead, even if it cost him greatly.  
  
"Thank you," he answered truthfully, more than he would have anticipated. "His name is Alexander - after some tsar, I guess - but my family and I have called him Shawsie from the first day." The words came easily, more than expected when one talked about his child with a former fiancée. In fact, the words came always easily whenever he evoked the boy. "He's quite lively, some might argue, but I'm very proud, indeed."  
  
Richard made profit of the lull in the conversation to gather his thoughts. The end of their more serious discussion did not stop him to schedule in a corner of his memory a courtesy visit to an old friend in Scotland Yard. Philip, now Commissioner Mortimer, and him had known each other since their school days in Edinburgh, and both men had risen high in their respective ranks, helping each other more than regularly over the years, exchanging exclusivity for information. A policeman had more power but a journalist had more freedom, and the combination of the two was unstoppable.  
  
"How's George?" he asked, as much for the sake of propriety as for genuine curiosity. The circumstances of the boy's birth had made it impossible to forget the boy's name. That day back in 1921, little George Crawley had appeared twice in the Times, quite a feat for a day-old boy, among the other births celebrated by the social circles of the conservative paper and among the obituaries in a short text announcing his father's demise.  
  
Mary was surprised he knew her son's name-briefly-then she remembered this was Richard Carlisle she was talking to; he'd have seen the birth announcement-and the obituary, too. Mr. Crawley is survived by his wife, Lady Mary Crawley, and his son, George Crawley, both of Yorkshire...  
  
"Nine months, but he thinks he's two and tries to do everything his cousin Sybbie does." She supposed Richard had heard about Sybil...Quickly, she went on, "Tom-Mr. Branson-took them outside."  
  
She turned in her chair to look out the window at the front lawn and saw her brother-in-law scooping up Sybbie, who'd just taken a spill.  
  
"Oh dear. It appears there are more clothes to get grass stains out of." Realising what she was saying, she said, with a self-effacing laugh, "And now you see what a mundane conversationalist I've become, talking about laundry. I should probably take that as my cue to ring off."  
  
He thinks he's two and tries to do everything his cousin Sybbie does.  
  
Or, in other words, George Crawley was a pain in the arse.  
  
Richard smiled, happy to be able to hide behind the telephone, and took a puff of his cigarette. The description sounded awfully like someone Richard knew but he refrained from commenting.  
  
"Summer, grass and kids, an awful combination, indeed," he answered instead, thinking of Mrs. Mikhailkova's earlier remark. "I'm seriously considering giving the laundress a healthy rise for her trouble."  
  
Mary smirked to herself, glad once again that he couldn't see her, as she considered just how much trouble the staff who cared for any child of Richard Carlisle's was likely to encounter. course, the father was equally troublesome, but he was at least his talk of pay rises was a different tune to the one he'd sung that dreadful Christmas when he'd groused about the servants having their half-day off.  
  
"Are you pleased with Alexander's governess?" she asked, since Richard didn't seem keen for their conversation to end, after all. For all she'd dreaded this necessary telephone call, the subject the uncomfortable one had given way to was enjoyable-and absolutely the last subject she'd ever imagined passing a Saturday afternoon discussing with her former fiance. "We had to dismiss one in the spring when Mama caught her...showing preferential treatment to George. The new one's better, I suppose. The children seem happy with her."  
  
Not, so happy, she supposed, with another glance out the window, as they romped about the grounds with Tom. They were coming back toward the house, George perched on his uncle's shoulders, Sybbie scampering along beside them with her ribbons untied and chubby fists clutching wildflowers and weeds she'd picked.  
  
Richard crushed his cigarette in the ashtray more forcefully than necessary. She had to broach that topic…  
  
"Well, since I had a say in the hiring of the present one, I'm very happy," he answered curtly, trying not to take months of frustrations created by the endless fights about ignorant nannies and education as a whole on an innocent bystander.  
  
Mary had enough in her own plate as it was.  
  
Then again, if a certain person had not led him along for the best part of two years, they would not have this surrealist conversation about the children they had with other people.  
  
As if on cue, Shawsie made himself heard from upstairs.  
  
"Listen, I'd love to speak more, but I've the impression I'm needed upstairs," he spoke again as he got up from his chair. "For the better or the worse, I don't know, it seems like I'm the only one whose scolding is efficient, for now."  
  
Yes, that was one of Richard's talents she was well acquainted with, though Mary did not, of course, pass comment. Especially when she'd clearly made him cross with her inadvertant slip-up about the nanny. Divorce, she supposed, brought its own set of difficulties to raising a child without a spouse.  
  
"Perhaps while you're giving the laundress a pay rise, you ought to dock the governess' salary for not doing her job," she joked instead, as she got up. "I must go, too. Tom's just brought the children in, and for some reason George prefers the way I feed him his scrambled egg at tea. And I prefer that to the strained peas, which always means the laundress has extra laundry from me."  
  
Her fingers flexed around the telephone as she contemplated how to say goodbye. She'd expected this conversation to be completely business-like, even hostile, yet it had been civil...more than that, friendly. Which was rather unchartered territory for her and Richard.  
  
"If you do hear anything about...the other matter," she said, "do let me know. I've been thinking I might stay with Aunt Rosamund in a week or two." Not to do the London season, of course, but for a change, to see friends in town. She wasn't entirely sure what had made her tell him so now.  
  
"There's no other matter, and if you want it to stay that way, don't babble about it," he admonished patiently. The cold and careful Lady Mary Crawley could be incredibly naive at times. "However, if you want George to acquire even more bad habits, bring him over while you're in town. Shawsie needs some company of his age."  
  
For a second, it seemed that Mrs. Mikhailkova's demonstration of authority had worked, whatever it was, then the cries started again, louder if it was possible. More than anything, he should give her a raise for her patience and her tolerance.  
  
"I should really go. Goodbye Mary."  
  
A phrase she thought she'd heard him utter for the last time two years ago. And now here he was, saying it again, having just invited her to bring her son to play with his.  
  
"I'll let you know when we're in town," she said, slightly dazed as she hung up the phone.  
  
There were times when she certainly questioned whether her life took more surreal turns than other people's did.


	3. Baby steps

London, summer 1922  
  
"His legs seem stronger by the day, don't they? Look at how he's climbing the slope!" Richard's father did not even bother to hide the wonder in his voice as three generations of Carlisles lazed an unusually sunny Thursday away on the terrace. With Wimbledon reaching the end of the final week, things had been slow at the office so Richard had postponed some meetings - to which people paid half attention anyway - and rewarded himself with a day off.  
  
"Mr. Alexander! You should not run like that! You are going to scratch your other knee!"  
  
The two men were the ones lounging in the sun at any rate, while Shawsie ran everywhere, much to his nanny's chagrin.  
  
Three days before, the Carlisle patriarch had suddenly decided to travel south to see how much the little one had changed since Richard last had been to Edinburgh. Never mind the small fact that it had been only three weeks ago. The younger Carlisle smiled in spite of himself. Mark Carlisle, great denigrator of the English in general and the London inferno in particular never had been so keen to jump on a train due south at the merest excuse than since Shawsie's birth.  
  
Richard teared his eyes away from the paper to watch a now very familiar scene. Seeing Shawsie as he climbed the slope did not possess the same sense of wonder for him as for his father. It was old news, two-week old news, actually.  
  
"Next step, the cherry tree…"  
  
"I'm sure Mrs Mikhailkova will appreciate that. Should I tell her about your own exploits at the same age to placate her?"  
  
Richard winced. Somehow, he was not sure that this kind of disclosure could be reassuring. Knowing the nanny, she would just barricade Shawsie for fear he might have the idea of following his crazy father's footsteps.  
  
"Probably not. Did you see they cancelled the Tourmalet this year because of the snow?" he changed the topic diplomatically. Talking about the Tour de France was a sure way to distract his father from embarrassing reminiscences, and unwanted further discussion about an upcoming visit.  
  
"Did they? Hard to believe, considering how warm it is here. Who won?"  
  
"Jean Alavoine. He finished sixteen minutes before the second."  
  
"Again? Good job!"  
  
Mark Carlisle always liked a good sports story. Conveniently, Richard had the best journalists in the country in this area.  
  
"Apparently, he was the first in the ascent of the Aubisque, Aspin and Peyresourde," Richard finished his report.  
  
"Courageous lad. I hope he'll manage to win this year. He deserves it."  
  
"If he's lucky…"  
  
This was one of their great differences. Mark Carlisle still had an idealistic side, which expressed itself in his passion for sports, while Richard's cynicism coloured his vision of everything, leisure and distractions included.  
  
"Stop it, Richie. Let an old man dream a little, will you?"  
  
"Aye, aye…"  
  
Richard checked his watch before resuming his reading. Quarter to three. If his telegram about his father's impromptu visit had not discouraged her, Mary would be here at four.  
  
"Tell me about Wimbledon latest results before I go," his father went on, ignoring his son's mockery. "I don't want to be late for the game. I still can't believe that you prefer receiving this woman's visit to enjoying a great game of tennis in this nice box of yours."  
  
"Aye, aye…"

 

* * *

  
  
At five minutes till four, Mary climbed the front steps to Richard's London house slowly-she was, after all carrying George, which deprived her of a hand to hold the iron railing-but her hesitation fooled no one, least of all herself. She couldn't recall having felt her heart beat so erratically behind her ribs since her court presentation more years ago than she liked to own, and that only contributed to her vexation. Having recently reached the milestone of her thirtieth birthday, she felt she was far too old for nerves before paying a social call-especially when it was a social call she had arranged herself. This did little to assuage the slight breathlessness and stomach churning as she ascended the final step and stood at Richard's doorstep a few minutes earlier than she'd planned, staring at the knocker, both arms wrapped tightly around George. She hardly cared that in his cubby fists he clutched her double string of pearls, tugging them inevitably toward his mouth.  
  
Accepting an invitation to afternoon tea with her former fiance and his son had been a half-mad idea to start with. Keeping it after she learned his father had made a surprise visit to town was nothing short of fully certifiable insanity.  
  
That Richard warned her-via telegram-had been a chance to get out of it, surely? Yet somehow at the time that never seemed a viable option to her. To decline would be to acknowledge that she was intimidated by the man who was once to have been her father-in-law, wouldn't it? And she'd been reluctant enough about spending time with Richard's family during their engagement. If they were to mend fences-if he was to be of any help to her at all with this-new-Bates situation-she would have to overcome these awkward feelings about their past.  
  
Besides, she told herself, releasing her grip on George slightly so that his bottom rested solidly on her hip and her hand was free to rescue her pearls from him, she was only being paranoid. Richard said Mark would be out-at Wimbledon, the match set to begin at this very moment. If she could depend on Richard for anything, it would be not to lie to her.  
  
George protested rather vociferously when she untangled her necklace from his slobbery fingers-the strength of his grasp never ceased to surprise her-and he grabbed for them again when she released his hand to rap on the door.  
  
"Mind your manners, darling," she told him in a low voice as she caught his tiny hand in her own, brushing her lips over his soft brown hair that poked out from beneath his cap. "We don't want Sir Richard to think you're spoiled, do we?"  
  
At the sound of the lock turning over within the door, and the crack of the hinges as it started to swing open, she held her breath...

 

* * *

  
  
Brooks had the habit of never commenting about his employer's decisions, always accepting them and following them with his typical deference he had honed during his years as a colonial non-commisioned officer in India. With a man like sir Richard, it was not that difficult, and most of the time, if you excepted his private life, the man's wishes and demands were reasonable, a far cry from the sheer stupidity Brooks had to contend with in the army. However, not voicing his opinions did not mean the valet had none. He witnessed mistresses coming and going without a word - noticing with amusement that the reality was sometimes quite remote from the pictures in the papers. He had welcomed the new Lady Carlisle with a sense of impending doom, and had seen her out for the last time with a deep feeling of relief and even triumph. It was an end at last to the saga that had begun at Downton Abbey, where he had been deaf to the endless criticism in the servants' hall and mute to the slow degredation of his employer's mood and behaviour that each visit to Yorkshire brought in the course of the autumn of 1919.  
  
Love could turn a rational man into a perfect idiot. Sir Richard had been the example of that, during the failed engagement and the months that had followed the break-up. Fortunately, the man was like a cat and he had managed to regain his footing at last, finding in the little boy the element of stability he had lacked for so long.  
  
As a consequence, when his employer announced earlier in the morning that Lady Mary Crawley would pay a visit in the afternoon, Brooks had nodded in agreement, not without blinking in surprise, in a rare display of opinion. In the drawing room where the boy was comparing the quality of different surfaces for his toy car, none of which - mahogany table, Persian carpet, waxed parquet floor - was suitable for such an activity, a furious pair of icy blue eyes found his own, showing him that the valet's disapproval was noted, and shared by the patriarch.  
  
When the a rasp on the door made itself heard at five past four, Brooks walked through the lobby with measured steps, schooling his worried frown into his trademark unruffled expression, and opened the door. The sight he discovered was quite unexpected, a young woman struggling with a rather agitated boy in her arms, with no army of nanny in sight. Unable not to raise an amused eyebrow, Brooks welcomed the guest and guided her through the corridor to the terrace with a disturbing feeling of déjà-vu.

 

* * *

  
  
It was not, of course, the first time Mary had visited Richard's house, though she was slightly surprised at how much detail she recalled, for on those occasions she'd maintained that air of aloofness that always seemed to irritate him so, for all his claims that enthusiasm was not an accurate expression of who they were. A few paintings hung on the walls which had not then, a new scuplture here, a vase there, which still conveyed an air of familiarity to her because they recalled an art exposition she'd attended with Richard-he'd sponsored it, of course. He'd told her if there was anything she liked, it would of course be no trouble to procure it for Haxby-an offer which she'd decided was borne less from a generous spirit than a desire to show off.  
  
George flailed in her arms she twisted to keep him from upsetting a no doubt priceless ornament beside the telephone table. Were these new pieces of Richard's choosing, or his wife's? What had the ex-Lady Carlisle deemed worthy to take with her to Haxby, when she'd been persuaded to leave her child behind?  
  
The boy was the first person Mary's gaze alit on when she stepped through the French doors onto the terrace. Dressed in a sturdy sailor suit much like the one George wore, only bigger and sporting a few impressive grass stains, the toddler moved too quickly for her to get a good glimpse of his face and determine whether he favored his father beyond the thatch of fair curls on his head. He was chased by a nanny who looked as though she could do with a lounge on one of the deck chairs from which Richard was languidly arising. He swung his long legs over the side, squinting in Mary's direction against the sun at her back-she was glad she'd chosen one of her lightest summer dresses, crocheted Irish lace over a light lavender slip-as he folded the newspaper he'd been reading, sliding his fingers over the edges to form sharp creases.  
  
"Hello, Richard," she said.  
  
"Good afternoon, Mary."  
  
Richard abandonned his paper on the table by the deck chairs and strode across the terrace and observed the woman he could have married and the restless bundle in her arms. Motherhood and grief had erased to last traces of childhood from her features. She was definitely thinner, too thin even, he decided as he noticed how much her collarbone could be seen through the skin. Her cheeks seemed hollower as well.  
  
At the same time, motherhood suited her well as he saw her struggle patiently with her son, displaying a suprising strength in her so thin arms as the boy twisted and jerked.  
  
"Why don't you sit down and let little George free as I try to get a hand on Shawsie?" he offered. "Brooks will bring tea soon. Is sencha still to your taste?"  
  
For an instant Mary hesitated under his scrutiny. Was he making fun of her, referring to how she had remarked once on his exotic-read: expensive-tastes in food and drink? Shrugging off the thought, she nodded and murmured a quiet thanks, grateful for a moment to collect herself as he jogged across the garden after his son.  
  
But as she bent to release her own boy onto the soft turf, which he inspected rather more warily than she would have believed from his antsiness to be out of her arms, her attention flickered between him and her host as he scooped Shawsie up, putting an end to his protest by tossing him up into the air and catching him again capably. She watched the play of muscles in Richard's freckled forearms below the cuffs of his his rolled-up shirtsleeves as he held the boy overhead, took in the matching expressions of delight and adoration on both Carlisles' faces as they laughed, the toddler's giggles a counterpoint to his father's rumbling chuckle, punctuated by demands to do again, Dada!  
  
Mary blinked. She refused to allow the scene, which she had never-would never-see played out with Matthew in their own garden, to make her maudlin. Instead, she focused on the surprise of Richard turning out to be a playful father.  
  
Without warning, George darted across the grass on all fours, and as she straightened up and stepped back, giving him space to explore, Mary caught Richard's eye as he carried Shawsie back toward the terrace, where Brooks, as predicted, had just come out with the tea tray. Was he surprised by the sort of mother she was?  
  
"What do you think? Do you trust Shawsie to be George's guide in the garden or do we ask Mrs Mikhailkova to take out some toys so that the boys entertain themselves on the terrace while we catch up?" Richard asked as he stepped aside to block George's way to the rosebushes.  
  
"Let's see how they get on first," Mary replied, and took a seat at the tea table as Brooks poured her a cup. "Mrs Mikhailkova-" Good; she hadn't butchered the Russian name. "-looks as though she could do with a rest before we send her on errands, and George is used to playing with Sybbie in the nursery. She's about Shawsie's age."  
  
"Milk and sugar, m'lady?" Brooks asked.  
  
"Just milk, thank you."  
  
She looked back out into the garden to see George babbling as he crawled toward Richard's son, who stepped backwards until he found the refuge of his nanny's skirt, suddenly timid.  
  
"Baby?" he asked.  
  
"Yes, that's Baby George," the Nanny replied as George reached them and made a grab at Shawsie's clothes.  
  
Shawsie began to cry, and Mary turned to Richard in amusement. "Though it would seem Shawsie isn't used to sharing his garden?"  
  
"He's been raised in a gilded cage for most of his young life," Richard replied with a resigned shrug as he stood up again, heading to the corner of the terrace where two balls were abandonned. "He needs to get used to sharing his things. We'll be heading to Inverness in August, and he'll have to contend with a whole tribe of noisy cousins. It will do him some good."  
  
He grabbed them and walked to the boys.  
  
"You be careful, Shawsie," he warned, kneeling by his son. "George's still a baby, don't kick the ball, make it roll. Alright?"  
  
"A'right," the toddler repeated with a solemn nod.  
  
"And no running by the rosebushes."  
  
Shawsie nodded again, which granted him a kiss on the forehead.  
  
"Good."  
  
Only then, Richard straightened and strode back to his guest.  
  
"How are all the Carlisles?" asked Mary, stirring her tea. "I hope your father wasn't too disappointed going to Wimbledon without you."  
  
Had Richard told Mr Carlisle why he wasn't attending the tennis match?  
  
"Wonderful!" he replied a bit too quickly to hide his surprise at such a casual question.  
  
Once upon a time, when they were engaged, she barely would have thought of asking about her future in-laws. And now, she worried about his father going to a tennis game on his own… Time was a funny thing, really. Richard decided to hide that his father had purposefully gone to the game on his own to avoid meeting her...  
  
"My brother-in-law got an important job at Glasgow University so we're almost neighbors now when I travel north. My father is ecstatic, you can imagine. He got to know two new grandsons before a third one came to life, and both his children live in the same country as him for once."  
  
Mary nodded as she sipped her tea. "My cousin Rose has come to stay at Downton while her parents are in India. Mama likes having her there, with Sybil gone…" Her voice softened unintentionally on the word, and quickly she forged ahead. "...and with Edith back and forth to London. And of course she's the doting grandmother you'd expect."  
  
Richard smiled at that. Indeed, he had no difficulties at all to picture Cora as a doting grandmother. After all, that had been this particular side of Mary's mother - her American side as the Crawleys put it with a disgusted frown - that had given him an ephemeral ally during the engagement. Unexpectedly, a vague feeling of nostalgia caught him by surprise at Mary's recollections.  
  
Edith, the ugly duckling, always struggling to keep her footing in a family that did not pay attention to her. Forever he would remember her closed expression as he confronted her about a certain letter that had come to his attention while putting a lead on Mary's scandal. This stupid and horrid rivalry was so foreign to him, who had been so protective of his sister, to the point of frightening away potential suitors just with an angry stare.  
  
He would have never written to the Ottoman embassy for sure. He would have desecrated the bastard's tomb.  
  
Dear Sybil, so different from the rest of the family, the free spirit, but at the same time, so similar in the way she decided not to like a person on principle. Once, he had not resisted pointing that out as they walked back from the village to Downton. It was one of the first nice days of the spring of 1918 and he had let Branson and Brooks deal with the suitcases while he enjoyed a quiet walk, on his own, leaving London politics behind and bracing himself for Crawleys' politics that waited for him ahead. He'd met Mary's younger sister on the way. She tried to be polite, as usual, but her silent hostility was so blatant that he had not resisted the temptation to tease her - she was so young and it was so easy - and say some needed truths, as well. Sometimes, being accused of being successful, of being good at something could get annoying.  
  
You live in the fantasy that you're different from your family when, in fact, you're just another Crawley, indignant and prejudiced. It's just your prejudice that's different, not your behaviour.  
  
Beware of the excess of the neo-convert. You should not take Branson's example as representative of the rest of the Reds. He's a naive fool who wouldn't last a month under Lenin's regime.  
  
Of course, she had not liked it at all, and she had quickened her pace, her shoulders straightened in indignation.  
  
Really, time was a funny thing. All the anger and bitterness the simple evocation of Downton and Yorkshire used to provoke were gone and all that was left was nostalgia. Or maybe a far worse experience had made him reevaluate his memories of this particular period of his life.  
  
"Sybil…" he murmured. "Your parents must have gone through hell. And the rest of the family I can imagine."  
  
Reading the unexpected obituary had left him shocked, and sad, even if he had not been especially close to the third Crawley girl - she had never let him. But no one likes to read about the death of a young person they used to know.  
  
No one could wish this to their worst enemies.  
  
Without even thinking about the ramifications with his new in-laws, he had sent his condolences to Cora and Mary - he was not ready to do such a thing for the Earl and his mother - and a bouquet for the funeral.  
  
Replacing her teacup on her saucer, Mary withdrew her hands into her lap, clasping her fingers together. For a moment she watched her right thumb fiddle with the wedding ring on her left. That Richard had it in him to be so kind might have come as a surprise, had it not been for the note he'd sent her after seeing Sybil's obituary. Somehow, perhaps because of how sparing Richard was with sentiment, it had been one of the more touching condolences she'd received. Though she hated the thought of being maudlin at tea, she felt moved now to candor.  
  
"The past two years have been the darkest our family have ever faced. And to think we came out of a war and the Spanish flu epidemic relatively unscathed."  
  
The sounds of the children at play reached her ears, and she looked out into the garden, watching George struggle to pick up a ball in his small hands. Shawsie did not seem to like this, but his nurse had him firmly in tow.  
  
"It seemed particularly cruel that Sybil should have died in childbirth. She had such modern ideas about the role of women."  
  
A little smile formed on her lips, and she looked up at him.  
  
"Did I ever tell you about the time she came down to dinner dressed in a pair of harem pants?"  
  
"No, you didn't…"  
  
Actually, they never reached the point of careless confidence and family reminiscences. She had been too guarded, reserving these idle chats to her then cousin, and he had been far too prudent, wary of disturbing their more than fragile equilibrium, afraid of ending up with a broken heart.  
  
"I wish I could have seen that," he went on after a thoughtful silence, letting a timid smile form on his lips.  
  
And see the expression on the Earl's face.   
  
Richard reached for the teapot and poured another cup for his guest before filling his own teacup, suddenly ill at ease with this kind of familiarity.  
  
Sybil and the harem pants he had never seen nor talked about, Mary and her stubborn, dark look as they played tennis at Cliveden, Lady Grantham and her scathing "Do you promise?", Mary and her infuriating affections for a man who valued more his twisted sense of honor than the people around of him, all of this was in the past, and should stay firmly in the past.  
  
Contrary to the Crawleys, Richard believed that rear-view mirrors were only useful in a car.  
  
In the garden, Shawsie had decided that sharing his ball with the intruder was a better option than crying in his nanny's skirt.  
  
Good.  
  
This was the future, the only thing that really mattered.  
  
He glimpsed at Mary and noticed with satisfaction that the silent respite had given her enough time to compose herself again.  
  
"About the non-event we never talked about on the phone…" he began carefully, studying her reaction as he switched the topic of their conversation, finally broaching what this meeting was really about.  
  
"Yes?" Mary set down her teacup on her saucer with a clink, sitting up straighter in her chair as her attention diverted abruptly from Richard's son sharing his ball with her son with a rather surprising willingness. "Have you-heard anything new?"  
  
She knew she sounded far too eager about Green's death though Richard warned her to pretend there was nothing untoward about it, but she didn't care. Anna's suffering had been too great, and the strain in her relationship with her husband continued.  
  
It was incredible how the cold and careful Lady Mary could revert to childlike naivety and candor in a second. Once upon a time, years ago, in his office, he had witnessed how fast the carefully built façade could crumble.  
  
So you'll do it. You must act fast.  
  
Back then, he had misinterpreted her sudden change of tone as simple and understandable relief when it had been the proof that the wonderful poker player who forced him to back down and reveal part of his feelings was nothing but a mask. She had only heard his words - as she always would - and never caught on the change in his voice he had not quite managed to control - as she always would - until the end.  
  
"Never try your hand at poker, Mary, you would lose Downton before you know it," he teased her - something he would have never done before - before sobering up. "The man tripped, like so many people who find themselves under a coach or a car. A simple casualty of the cruel city life."  
  
Mary's face flushed at his mockery, but the gentleness in his eyes and his voice cooled her ire and any heated reply she might have made.  
  
"I suppose that's for the best, for all parties concerned," she said, sitting back with a sigh. "And he won't be hurting anyone else. Thank heaven." Although Mary suspected that even in death Green continued to hurt Anna.  
  
As she picked up her teacup again, her gaze drifting back to the children as she drank, she considered his seemingly glib remark about poker.  
  
"But why bring it up at all?" she asked.  
  
"Wasn't it the very purpose of your visit?" he replied back, eyebrows raised in mock innocence.  
  
Let's see how fast she learns.  
  
He was testing her, and Mary wasn't entirely sure whether to be annoyed or amused. Well-it wasn't a habit of hers to fail tests, Richard's being no exception. She lifted an eyebrow in a mirror of his expression.  
  
"I thought you invited me so your son could teach my son a few bad habits."  
  
"And I'm appalled at the idea of conceding that it is your son who seems to teach mine the good habit of sharing a toy."  
  
Better, much better.  
  
"Though, speaking about bad habits, it came to my attention that a certain valet had built quite a reputation before working for his latest employer. I don't know if any formal complaint was ever brought to the police, anywhere. But it might come as a problem should the London police catch wind of it."  
  
There had been a flash of approval, even admiration in his eye even as he balked at her implication about their children's breeding, but this new information, subtly delivered-he really was a smooth operator, which she'd never fully appreciated, despite all it had done for her and her family-overshadowed any personal enjoyment she might have felt at this conversation. How positively horrid to think of such an action being habitual. How glad she was he was dead, by any means-and how very much greater was her hope that Anna would not suffer more by her husband being implicated.  
  
"I see," she said, schooling every ounce of coolness and carefulness she possessed into not revealing her horror or her sense of justice. "In other words, I ought to practice my poker face in case of that eventuality."  
  
"Not for long… Thankfully, or, better said, horribly thankfully, Scotland Yard have their hands full with actual and daily crimes, so their span of attention is quite limited. If nothing catches their attention in the next two months or so, the accident will be only an accident forever, and everybody concerned will be out of the woods, with the exception of the little creep who now rests between four planks."  
  
In an ideal world, which Great Britain in 1922 was not, complaints should have been made, investigations carried out and justice done. But, especially in this cases, it did not work that way.  
  
Silence and revenge were the normal course of action. Silence of the victim, silence of the people around them, hypocrisy on everybody's part. The police did not make its job so people took it into their own hands, and other people had to cover for it, impeding the police from doing its job.  
  
What a mess they were living in. But, coming from a world which had thrown its youth into an inimaginable bloodbath for naught, it was hardly surprising.  
  
"Then, you'll be able to accept Lord Gillingham's attentions without any remorse or fear."  
  
Richard's eyes did not leave Mary's as he put back his empty tea-cup on the table.  
  
"What is said in London about my relationship with Lord Gillingham has nothing to do with this," she replied, not knowing what she was more annoyed at, the notion that she was an object of idle gossips in London or Richard's suggestion that her interest about Green's case could be mercenary. "And, frankly, I wish Lord Gillingham were rather less attentive."  
  
Richard's eyes narrowed at the slightly resigned, defeated tone. He considered his guest with attention, recognizing immediately the signs that had enraged him so much in the past. The misty eyes, the clenched jaw, the attempt at straightening her shoulders…  
  
Crawley was still hurting her, from his grave no less.  
  
"Well, you can't go back in time and make it all different, can you? As impalatable it is, that's your reality."  
  
How many times had he wished she could accept her situation and truly move on, instead to clinging to her almost-faded dream. For a few months, she had been rewarded, by a perfect wedding, a son, a renewed estate… On the other hand, she had not learned to cope with reality, and now she was paying the price, with interest.  
  
How can one move on if their life taught them that negating reality and being prisoner of the past was rewarded in the end?  
  
That was behavior Richard had never been able to understand, even after his mother's untimely passing.  
  
The past was the past.  
  
If only the Crawleys or the Vronskis had accepted this simple fact, his life would have resulted so much easier.  
  
He would not be devising plans to buy back the papers he had built with his own efforts and money.  
  
He would not be raising a child on his own.  
  
"If anything, I've been a direct witness of the hold Matthew Crawley had on your heart. You wasted almost six years of your life for him. As long as you don't waste fifteen years, anybody can understand your need to heal."  
  
In spite of conventions and good breeding, Richard reached for his cigarettes and lit one. With a profound exhale, he motioned in the direction of the garden where Shawsie and George had found their rythm, throwing the ball at each other in a bout of laughter, teaming up to make Mrs Mikhailkova's life even more miserable.  
  
"And I, for one, can totally relate to your need of focusing on what really matters, and wanting to be left alone at the moment."  
  
The nanny, accustomed to one young charge, looked discombobulated by the boys' unexpected friendship-a feeling to which Mary strongly related as Richard's remarks set her into rather a flurry of conflicting thoughts and emotions which she was hard-pressed to contain. She twitched her thumbs against her forefingers, wishing she could be angry with him for calling her years waiting for Matthew a waste. But how could she be, when she herself had wondered as she lay sleepless with her husband's side of the bed empty, if the few months of happy marriage were worth the price of the heartache that preceded them? She'd be lying if she said it never crossed her mind that she might have found happiness in another marriage, would not be raising a son alone, if she had not waited.  
  
Nor could she escape the irony that it was Richard, of all people, who understood-indeed, empathized-what it was she needed right now. Her family, well-intentioned as they were, were pushing her to do something she simply wasn't ready for. Funny, that, when they'd actively discouraged he from doing so in the past, when she'd wanted to.  
  
One thing was clear to her now, though, and she abandoned all pretense of a poker face as she poured herself another cup of tea.  
  
"It's good to have a friend," she said, but the smile she intended to give Richard fell away as a wail rang out in the garden.  
  
George had fallen onto his bottom, presumably knocked off his feet by the ball that was bouncing off into a flower bed a few feet back.  
  
"George may be a little harder sell," she said.  
  
Inwardly, Richard thanked George for the interruption, for he did not know how to react to this turn of the conversation. Mary had used the term friend so much while speaking about her cousin that he had grown quite wary of it. Or maybe his reluctance and instinctive mistrust were simply a lasting after-effect of his failed marriage.  
  
He stood up and walked to the children to assess the damage. Mrs Mikhailkova knelt by the boy while Shawsie looked about to cry.  
  
"The children are tired, Sir Richard."  
  
"That's evident," he shot back, more impatiently than intended.  
  
Without any further thought, he instructed the nanny to take Shawsie inside for a nap, to which he loudly objected, naturally, comforting the adults in their opinion, scooped little George up in his arms and walked back to the terrace.  
  
Time was a funny thing really.  
  
Mary stood as Richard strolled back toward her, bouncing George a little in his arms; her son stopped crying, but looked up at Richard with something like skepticsm, reaching out his plump arms for her as they returned to the terrace. It was time for his nap, as well, and though Mary was a little reluctant to cut the conversation short, she suspected from Richard's lack of hesitation to see to the children that he as uncomfortable with, or at least unprepared for, her declaration of friendship. Frankly, it had come unexpectedly to her, as well.  
  
She thanked him for a pleasant afternoon, and told him that perhaps the next time she was in London, she'd be sure to return the favor.


	4. Hesitation waltz (part one)

 

_London, Summer of 1923_

 

“Sir Richard’s in the nursery with Master Shawsie, your ladyship,” Brooks informed Mary as he led her through the front hall of the townhouse. The creaking of floorboards and thump of footsteps overhead, along with the indistinct rumble of a masculine voice punctuated by the piping babble of his son confirmed that this was so. “I’ll show you and Master George up when you’re ready.”

 

Indeed, George, who had not wanted to be carried into the house and toddled up the front steps clinging to her hand--or rather, _she_ clung to his hand as she struggled to keep hold of the umbrella, too--now wriggled from her grasp and went directly for the carpeted staircase.

 

“Thank you, Brooks. I think George knows the way.”

 

Chuckling, the servant made her a bow and murmured that he’d see to their tea, leaving Mary to follow George, who was crawling up the stairs. Not quite two, he was rather proficient at them; assured no calamity would befall him, she paused to check her reflection in the hall mirror which hung at the foot of the staircase.

 

She sighed at the crow’s feet which criss-crossed at the corners of her eyes. Rose’s ball had been fun and made Mary feel almost a _débutante_ herself for as long as it had lasted, but gone were the days when she could dance all night and not look rather worse for the wear the next day. Or feel it; fatigue throbbed dully in her temples. She set her handbag on the narrow marble topped table beneath the mirror and took out her compact to dab a little more powder over the shadows beneath her eyes, but was interrupted in her task by the sound of heavy footsteps approaching the stairs overhead.

 

“Good afternoon, Mary,” Richard greeted as he scooped the wayward toddler in his arms once little George reached the top of the stairs.

 

Since the start of the Season, Mary’s visits had become a regular occurrence, and the once wary George Crawley felt comfortable enough around the house to make his own way to the nursery.

 

“I read this morning that your cousin’s ball had been a fantastic success. Congratulations.”

 

She snapped her compact shut and replaced it in her handbag, which she left on the table as she started up the stairs to meet him.

 

“The morning editions must have gone to print before the party was over,” she replied. “Were there spies in our midst?”

 

In spite of George’s grasping fingers--the child had not lost any time in noticing the reading glasses perched on his nose--Richard noticed the subtle movement and let a teasing smile form on his lips.

 

Lady Mary Crawley and her vanity. He could write a book or two on this topic.

 

“Let’s say that the Prince’s _impromptu_ visit…” Richard had to struggle against the reaching hands, George having decided he wanted the glasses for himself. “....made you the center of attention in London.”

 

When evasive maneuvers and quiet admonitions failed, Richard put the boy back on the floor and motioned him in the direction of the nursery with a light push to the bottom. He straightened up to shake Mary’s hand.

 

“Can I be curious and ask what inspired such a visit?”

 

His handshake was firm, as ever, yet in the times they’d interacted since their Valentine’s Day adventure, hunting through the seedier parts of London for his wayward reporter, Mary had noticed that his demeanor with her was more relaxed than it had ever been. It seemed that they had finally put their past behind them, and had settled into genuine friendship.

 

Still, she wasn’t entirely comfortable with the intentness of his gaze, those journalist’s eyes that never missed a detail. She drew her hand from his to sidestep him, before he noticed she wasn’t at her best.

 

“That depends,” she replied, glibly, following George, who’d stopped to look back over his shoulder at her, waiting for her to accompany him to his playmate’s nursery. She wanted to confide in Richard about the prince. It was an amusing story, and made a nice change from dithering over Charles and Tony, which he surely must be tired of.

 

“Are we off the record?”

 

She didn’t truly think he’d publish, but nevertheless she wanted to be sure.

 

“You do know I have many other sources?” Richard took her arm and ushered her to the nursery. “I just want your take on this story, and I’ll tell you mine.”

 

If his instincts were correct, and if the letter a fellow called Sampson had tried to sell around was genuine, the Crawleys had managed to find themselves right in the middle of some incredible drama once again.

 

He flashed his most amiable smile, raising his eyebrows expectantly, as always when he wanted to coerce a good story from a friend.

 

“Fair trade.”

 

“How can I refuse an offer like that?”

 

Mary spoke lightly, but she felt a prickle of warmth on her cheeks. Of course he had other sources, and he must think her terribly naive if she believed it was possible to keep anything a secret long from Richard. It wasn’t the first Crawley family intrigue she’d prefer he heard from her first, and at least this one was relatively harmless. At that, she gave a little laugh, and her companion glanced down at her with a look that clearly begged to know what thought amused her.

 

“I was only thinking, one knows one’s family has dodged some pretty dangerous bullets when breaking and entering doesn’t seem a grave threat to one’s reputation.”

 

They had come to the nursery now, and Richard’s hand released Mary’s arm to allow her to step through the doorway ahead of him. (Was it a trick of her sleep-deprived senses, or did she feel a lingering brush of his fingertips on her sleeve?) She stopped just inside, narrowly avoiding stepping strewn about toys. It looked less like a nursery than a toy shop after an explosion. While Richard’s little boy sat astride a handsome dappled rocking horse in the midst of the mess, his Russian nanny was not to be found; usually, she was  frantically tidying up and trying to make her small charge help. It must be her day off. After all, the plan had been for the children to play in the garden, if the weather had permitted it. Which, in typical English fashion, it had not.

 

“Sorry for the revolution,” Richard apologized. “Mrs. Mikhalkova thought she could make profit of your visit and an afternoon in the garden to put some order there, without Shawsie’s interference.” He pushed some old toys away unceremoniously with his foot, clearing a path for Mary, motioning for her to sit by the window. Picking up a rather roughened up teddy bear, he explained. “He never plays with them anymore, but cries  whenever his nanny even tries to put them away to make room for new ones.”

 

Little George lost no time reacquainting himself with the contents of the room and went straight to a wooden truck he favored.

 

Joining Mary by the window, Richard settled into the second armchair and teased, “Breaking and entering? My, my, I see that our outing back in February made you discover new horizons of shady dealings.”

 

She laughed, reflecting on how readily she’d admitted to her mother that her conscience wouldn’t be troubled by lying. “Yes, I’ll lay full blame on your corruptive influence.”

 

A bump against her foot drew her gaze downward; George had pushed his car into it, and he gave an indignant shout.

 

“Oh no, darling, you’ve come to a roadblock. You’ll have to take a detour.” She crossed her leg, clasping her hands on her knee, and as George resumed pushing his car back and forth, she returned her attention to Richard. “I assume you know of Freda Dudley Ward?”

 

“I might have lived a bit like a recluse since the divorce, but it doesn’t mean I don’t keep tabs on whatever happens in our dear London,” Richard chuckled, extending a leg to create another ‘roadblock’, much to little George’s frustration. “Now, I have to ask you how you became acquainted to such a person with such low morals. I don’t think Lord Grantham would have approved her presence under his roof.”

 

“I’ve written to you about the shenanigans at Downton this year, so you can’t be _too surprised,_ ” Mary said. “Rose met her through a friend. They were at a jazz club together, and Freda confided that she had in her handbag a letter from... our very special guest.”

 

It was a little unnecessary to lower her voice  and avoid the prince’s name, as she and Richard were alone--though Brooks was due to return at any moment with their tea.

 

“That was an unwise decision on her part--not that we can be truly surprised, can we? Rose isn’t discreet when she has full possession of her faculties, and she had rather too much to drink at the club and said something to a Mr Terrance Sampson which led to his purloining the incriminating letter.”

 

Her narrative was interrupted when George decided that his car’s detour ought to be along the flank of the rocking horse, which distressed Shawsie.

 

“Shawsie!” Richard scolded. “What did I tell you this morning? Do you want to have your nap already, and let little George play here without you?”

 

Richard knew he was a little harsh and demanding, but if he wanted his son not to grow up as an entitled brat, the kind he met far too often in his social circles, it had to be done. Besides, the boy had spent the last two weeks with his mother’s family, and already he had fallen into some bad habits.

 

The admonition had its effect, and Shawsie stopped protesting. For a moment, he considered little George as he stubbornly rolled his car along the rail. He looked up at Richard pleadingly, willing him to intervene; although Richard kept his eyes trained on his son in a silent battle of wills, he resumed conversation with Mary.

 

“So that’s how this Sampson chap got his hands on a mysterious letter. You should know, he tried to sell it to Keith.  Fortunately for you we’re far more interested in our lead in summer sporting events than society gossip nowadays.” .

 

Although it was her son who was harassing poor Shawsie, Mary watched with keen interest as Richard interacted with his. For all he was an indulgent parent in terms of material possessions, he was not an overly permissive one. Unlike her. She knew she ought to get up and stop George from irritating the older boy, but the chair was too comfortable. Rather than get up, she leaned back into the cushions--it was exactly the sort of chair for dozing while soothing a child to sleep.   


“Thank goodness you’re covering more serious news than who’s sleeping with whom,” she said drily, returning to their conversation. “When Papa found out what Rose had done, he was convinced our family would be responsible for the embarrassment of the royal family. The only way to protect them was to get the letter back before Mr Sampson could make it public. What a narrow escape we had.”

 

“So you got the letter back? By breaking and entering?” Richard smiled as Shawsie finally decided he could go on playing with his horse in spite of the toddler’s disturbing activities. He rewarded the boy with an approving nod.“I would have paid to witness that, honestly.”

 

“We could have sold tickets and made a fortune. It was a comedy of errors. After we went to all the trouble of having Bates forge a note so we could get into Mr Sampson’s hotel, Rose and Charles and I tore the whole place apart and turned up nothing.”

 

Now, Richard had a most difficult time controlling a bout of laughter.

 

He shook his head in disbelief. The Crawleys were astounding people, really. It was as if they lived in some parallel universe in which the most ridiculous event could turn into a tremendous adventure. Even when reality insinuated itself back into their lives, bursting their fantastic bubble, they managed to recreate another one. In a strange way, it was  admirable.

 

“Far be it from me to criticize ,” he said as he leaned over, covering Mary’s clasped hands with his own in the brotherly gesture that his sister’s return to Britain had reaccustomed him to. “But you do realize you had other, simpler options, right?”

 

“We don’t all have the means to bribe, threaten, and call in favors,” Mary replied with an arched eyebrow. “In the end, it was embarrassingly simple. Papa organized a poker game, and Bates found the letter in Sampson’s coat pocket.” She laughed, wearily, and it faded away as a sigh as she let her head loll back deeper into the cushion. The weight of Richard’s large hand against hers was reassuring, and she scuffed the edge of her thumb against his palm. “He’d probably come directly from trying to sell it to Keith.”

 

Richard chuckled as he imagined the ever dignified Lord Grantham trying to act as the consummate host while his valet went through his guests’ pockets.

 

“Now, pity I’m not on your father’s guest list anymore,” he said, straightening up when he heard Brooks measures footsteps from the corridor. “Anyway, you’re lucky that Mr. Sampson is, if you believe Keith’s assessment, a pathetic excuse for a blackmailer apprentice. Should you meet a more formidable opponent, please don’t act so rashly.” He accepted the steaming cup of tea Brooks offered him. “Or, at least, please do consider giving me the heads up before everything blows up inevitably.”

 

He hid his teasing smile behind his cup.

 

“That way, I’ll be able to control the damage, or even make profit out of it if you aren’t the main victim. Speaking of which…” Once Brook’s footsteps had receded down the stairs, Richard’s tone became more serious. “Was it very wise to bring an eminent member of the administration to a breaking and entering?”

 

“Charles was so eager to prove his devotion, I’m not sure he considered the risk.” And she’d been so caught up in the drama she hadn’t considered it, either. She studied her teacup intently for a moment, before she raised it to her lips and took a sip. “It seems Mr. Blake wants to prove a lot of things. Last night I discovered he’s  been hiding a very crucial detail about himself from me. It seems he’s heir to a baronetcy and a large estate in Ulster.”

 

Richard raised an eyebrow at that and repressed a sigh of relief. At last. He had been more and more afraid of a regrettable slip up lately.

 

“Not a very big secret, you know,” he commented good-naturedly, enjoying the unusual peace in the nursery. Shawsie and little George had retreated to a corner of the room to play with cubes. “Some people in London even say that his current job in the administration is terribly convenient, given his future inheritance. Better to be in the know, if you want to keep a fragile estate on the top of things.”

 

Mary bristled instinctively at the dig at Charles’ character, though as she swallowed another sip of tea, she reminded herself Richard was not speaking out of jealousy. For a moment she mulled, watching Shawsie chatter instructions which George did not understand about the castle they were building; she feared it wouldn’t be long before George decided that destruction was more fun than construction.

 

“He said he wanted to win me by his own merit, not by his inheritance,” she said. “It wasn’t even Charles who told me. Tony did.”

 

 _That_ was a surprise.

 

“Really? The man can be a perfect idiot.”

 

If Charles Blake was known around London as a cunning and ambitious politician whose career had accelerated noticeably at the end of the war, after the infamous campaign in Russia, Tony Gillingham was gently mocked as an unfashionably honest man, a relic of some long gone, fantasized past of chivalrous tales. In some way, Richard could easily imagine the man revealing this particular piece of information to Mary, knowing how attached she was to her traditional way of life, just to have a fair competition. On a rugby pitch, Gillingham was the kind of man who stopped playing as soon as an opponent seemed to be injured, instead of pressing the advantage; on a tennis court, he was the kind of player who discretely erased the mark left by a litigious ball in order to give the point to his opponent.

 

“Or he’s an overlooked genius.”

 

Indeed, giving this kind of information could be seen as a way to shed some needed light on the hypocrisy of Blake’s position in the administration, and even in the political spectrum, pressing for reforms on the English soil and opposing any political change in Ulster. Irish, Catholic, second-class citizens tenants were far more profitable than increasingly politicized English labourers. After all, Gillingham could not have missed how the Crawleys had grown fond of their former Irish _chauffeur,_ Mary especially.

 

“Or a true gambler…”

 

Indeed, both Gillingham and Blake seemed to underestimate how complicated and even contradictory Mary could be. God knew he had committed the same mistake in the past.

 

“Now, I suppose what’s important is what _you_ make of this new development. I had the feeling you were growing quite fond of your fellow _pig rescuer_?”

 

Mary gave a snort of laughter, in spite of herself, at his gentle mockery. “I am. I’m fond of Tony, too. And they’re both mad about me.” She had to put a hand up to stifle a yawn. “Excuse me...I don’t _think_ that was a reflection of my feelings on the suitors.”

 

After all, they had compelled her to dance the night away.

 

It was preferable to lying in bed, alone, missing Matthew.

 

Or maybe it was a rare moment of undisguised truth. Richard cleared his throat, suddenly embarrassed. It was not his place to speak out, as his sister had aptly pointed out earlier in the summer when he first voiced his feelings about his  former fiancée’s suitors, but apparently nobody in Mary’s own family had done it yet.

 

For a little while, he let his eyes wander around the room, pausing on the boys playing with their cubes. Shawsie’s pyramid had reached an impressive height and started to waver for the lack a large enough base. By his side, Mary stirred her tea pensively, not looking like a woman enjoying her suitors’ attentions at all, wearing a sad expression he’d witnessed too much in the past.

 

“Can I speak freely?” he asked after a time, releasing the knot of his tie slightly.

 

She looked up from her tea. “You’re asking permission now?” she teased, but then gave a solemn nod. What was that he’d said once? _I’m paying you the compliment of being honest._

 

“I’m not in a position to speak my mind anymore, at least in my conception of relationships between people.”

 

_With my former fiancée._

 

Mary could guess where this was going. She rubbed the pad of her thumb against the handle of her spoon, smudging the silver. “If you’re going to tell me not to string them along, I’m not sure what more I can say. They seem to insist on being strung.”

 

“Actually, even if that’s true, I wouldn’t wish on anyone being strung along for years. As long as you’re honest with these chaps, I don’t have a problem--Not that it’s my place to have one.” He ameliorated the harshness of his words with a tentative smile before growing serious again “Truth is, I don’t worry about your suitors, I worry about you.”

 

This, and the strong feeling behind it, came as something of a shock to her. She was not at all sure how to feel about it herself, much less what to say. Ultimately, she was spared by the tower of blocks toppling at last. George clapped, shrieking joyously at the destruction, and Shawsie lent his own voice to the cacophony, only for the opposite reason.

 

At once, the adults  put their tea aside and stood.

 

“I think,” Mary said, “for now your worries are better directed elsewhere.”

 

“And God punished men’s arrogance and destroyed the tower of Babel.” Richard sighed in mock despair. “Is it too much to ask for more than half an hour of peace?”

 


	5. Hesitation waltz (part two)

So this the second part, out of three. Enjoy! _  
_

_London, Summer of 1923_

Westminster Palace buzzed with activity. If the House of Lords had finished their session earlier in the afternoon, the atmosphere in the House of Commons was electric as the debates about the new divorce law still raged between Conservative, Liberal and Labour parties. Blake let a proud smile form on his lips as he looked at his companion, how her attention had been captivated from the moment they had stepped into the Chamber. Who would have known that such a simple, spontaneous suggestion as they were enjoying an afternoon walk along the Thames would be such a success, so much more than the originally planned visit to the British Museum?

Lady Mary was really a wonderful creature.

Feeling her companion's admiring gaze on her, Mary tore her eyes from the fascinating debate raging on the floor below the gallery and grinned back at him.

This was precisely why she had grown  _fond_ , as Richard said, of Charles Blake: while there was a part of her that was flattered by Tony's traditionally romantic style of courtship, the larger part of her felt that she came away from outings with Charles feeling invigorated, stirred from lethargy.  _You must choose life_ , Granny said.

Tilting her head slightly toward his, she murmured, "I suppose the irony isn't lost on you that we're simultaneously on a date, celebrating reform in divorce laws?"

"Let's call it my way of warding off bad luck," Blake replied, winking mischievously. "So, Lady Mary, what do you make of these debates? What do you think of this Tory's assessment of impending social doom if the law is adopted?"

"I think…"

She glanced away, back to the scene which could hardly have played out before them in a more dramatic a fashion if it had been acted on a theatre stage than in a government building.

In fact, she had been thinking that this reminded her so much of Matthew. Of plans made, but never realized, to bring her here after it came up in some conversation or other that her father had never taken her along, not believing it a proper place for the sensitive ears of young rather typified the whole current debate about whether women should be afforded the same protection under the law as men. That Charles sought her opinion now made her think what a breath of fresh air it had been when Matthew came to Downton, making her see there might be more to her life than the glimpse of marriage Granny depicted to her and her sisters. There were men who wouldn't tell her what to think, but would be interested to know what she thought, independently of them.

Returning her attention to Charles, she found that his eyes sought hers eagerly, and her pulse accelerated a little in response.

"His definition of social doom might make a welcome change in this country," she said. "Only don't tell my grandmother I said so."

"Sir James is one of your own, you know. A Toff to the core. I believe his estate in Wales grants him more than steady income thanks to the mining industry, yet he seems unable to keep it afloat."

Since their very first encounter, there was a little devil that pushed him to challenge Lady Mary's values. She was so much better than all these entitled, useless people, his own uncle included. And why should he stop since she rose to the challenge so effortlessly?

"I still remember how he plead with us for a fiscal exemption last year…" He trailed off as Sir James finished his angry tirade. "Yet another man who can't realize this country has changed dramatically."

In the early days of their acquaintance, such comments would have provoked her. Although her posture had gone rigid, and she'd leaned a little away from him at the word  _Toff_ , she knew him well enough now not to take the bait.

Instead of returning fire, she smiled pleasantly, shrugged her shoulders, and replied, "You've spent enough time at Downton to see how slowly change is made. Not everyone has my father's advantage of two sons-in-law to broaden his horizons and usher his estate into this new era."

Matthew's plans and Tom's execution. What would Sybil make of Tom's role at Downton? she wondered, not for the first time… What would Sybil make of  _her_ , attending a House of Commons debate in favor of women's rights?

Blake turned back his attention to the following speaker to hide his sudden discontent, but the sight of Ramsay McDonald, the Scottish head of the Labour Party deepened his frown. His own party was in shambles, and Blake knew he must make crucial choices very soon, choices which were clearly limited by incoming inheritance, and his own inclinations. He probably should switch to the Conservatives sooner than he expected, and it left a bitter taste in his mouth.

If only the Labour had not benefitted so much from the post-war years…

"I've no doubts about that, since I witnessed this with my own eyes, Lady Mary," he replied pleasantly, images of a mud-covered Earl's daughter flashing in his mind. "Yet…"

She recognized that she might not agree with the thought he'd left dangling, yet he was showing her, as Matthew had, that she need not always agree point for point with people to get on with them. Raising her eyebrows, she prompted, "Yet?"

"Are you really sure about this Branson character?"

Mary blinked.  _Branson character_? Instantly, her warmth toward Charles' modern notions cooled. "I'm sure he's saved Downton, Mr Blake, and that my sister loved him very much."

Charles looked up at her, surprised at her sudden coolness. How could the Crawleys be so blind about a damned Republican? They were agitators and worse, a threat to peace and modernization. How many people had they killed? How many properties had they burnt down? Like in bloody Russia… The only way to modernization was a legal one, structured by a strong state and administration. Not chaotic, barbaric, senseless violence. As much as he despised his uncle's choices and behaviour, some things could not be forgiven.

"But you probably don't know that the British government took an interest in his writings when he was in Dublin. Quite a radical chap, very close to De Valera's side."

The Crawleys could not be totally oblivious to the threat they had welcomed into their house?

Mary did  _not_ know that, although it came as little surprise, given the circumstances that had led Tom to seek refuge at Downton in 1920. Certainly Papa had been wary of sheltering him-they all had been-yet at the same time no one  _feared_  him, as Charles seemed to imply they ought. Tom had been sorry, horrified, even, by the violent turn his compatriots had taken. He wanted no part in that. For heaven's sake, he had a little girl to care for!

"If you don't mind, I should like to hear the debate. Not to discuss my brother-in-law's political views."

Charles knew he should change the subject, he knew he should, but…

"Lady Mary, I respect your loyalty, believe me I do, but you never witnessed what these people were capable of…" Blake swallowed with difficulty.

In Russia, in Ireland-all senseless brutes. Nothing good could come out of this violence. Nothing.

"I'm no cowardly pacifist, and I did my bit. More than that…"

Had that bullet pierced his chest just one inch lower... He closed his eyes against the memory.

"But there's a great difference between serving your country and being a terrorist."

And God knew dining at the same table as one of them had tested his self-control more than once during his stay at Downton.

At his reference to his service, Mary had to acknowledge that Charles' points were not invalid. However…

"If you wish to convince me of your point, Mr. Blake, you might refrain from resorting to bombastic rhetoric. That might be all very well and good on the floor of the House of Commons, but it's not how I prefer to debate."

Her gaze wavered from Charles' face as she addressed him, drawn by another, familiar stare from a nearby seat.

"Especially," she added, lowering her voice, "as I've just spotted an acquaintance, who manages Sir Richard Carlisle's newspapers."

As she'd made eye contact with Keith McDonald, it would be rude not to acknowledge him. She smiled, and he nodded. She wasn't surprised he looked less than delighted to see her, but she was, indeed, when he unfolded his tall lean frame from his seat and sauntered in her direction.

"My, my, if it isn't Lady Mary Crawley," Keith drawled as he reached the couple. "Already preparing a back-up plan? Very wise for the mother of an heir to a well-coveted estate, I have to say."

If he grimaced the semblance of a gentle smile as he shook the woman's hand, he finished his sentence with a hard stare at the rather agitated young man by her side.

"I'm so pleased to have your approval, Mr McDonald," Mary replied, and she  _almost_ thought she saw something like the twitch of amusement on his face at her sarcasm, although he seemed relieved when she released his hand. "May I introduce Mr Charles Blake?"

Charles was clearly annoyed that their date had been interrupted, although Mary was frankly relieved, little as she liked Richard's colleague. How much had he overheard of their conversation? If she weren't convinced he loathed her, she might have suspected he'd come to her rescue.

"With pleasure. How do you do, Mr Blake?"

He returned the young man's less than benevolent stare with one of his own. He knew he disturbed what seemed to be some kind of a date but he did not care. Besides, what kind of idiot brought a young woman to such a boring circus?

"Mr McDonald. Lady Mary tells me you're in the newspaper business? Covering the debates?"

Keith's disgruntlement, Mary observed as Charles spoke to him, was not particular to herself.

"Richard told me you were mainly on the prowl for sport scoops these days."

First a second, Keith turned his attention to said Mr Blake. A pompous youngster from government, he was sure.

"Our world's a bit like yours, Mr Blake. Pawns are sent all over the country to cover debates, sporting events... to examine estates." Even if he was not particularly interested in Lady Mary's new life, he had overheard enough phone conversations on Richard's end to know who the man was. "Bosses make sure that the pawns learn their jobs well enough," he finished, indicating the bunch of youngsters behind him.

He then turned his attention to the young woman.

"Don't worry, I'll be quick and leave you to your companion soon enough. Just… Could you find the time between two dates to persuade our common friend to get the hell out his damn office? He doesn't listen to me anymore. Not surprising after nearly thirty years-not that I want to sound like a nagging wife."

Mary hadn't seen Richard in a good two weeks, not since the afternoon she'd brought George over to play with his son. They'd been meant to meet again, when Richard phoned to say Shawsie's mother had unexpectedly asked to take the boy for a holiday, and he'd agreed. She hadn't heard from him since and had been so occupied with her own family and friends that she'd scarcely thought to check in on him.

To say that she was surprised was an understatement. Surprised that Keith should approach her with such a request. Surprised at how concerned she was to hear that Richard, apparently, was having difficulty coping in his son's absence. Surprised at how she would rather, in this moment, talk to him than continue this debate with Charles.

"I can," she replied. "In fact I'll make sure he doesn't work through dinner."

She heard Charles draw in his breath; although they'd made no official evening plans, she was sure he'd expected to take her out. But she was in no mood to debate through dinner.

The irony was not lost on her that her alternative to an argumentative date was a brooding  _Richard Carlisle_.

Keith noticed the man's frustration and could not help but frown at Lady Mary's eagerness.

"Listen, I don't want to disturb anything… And I'm not sure Richard would be pleased to hear you used him as an escape plan, if you catch my meaning."

If he had not overheard the specifics of the couple's heated discussion, the young woman's tight expression was a more than sufficient clue.

"Just be sure to make use of your influence before tomorrow evening, or else I'll take the matter into my own hands."

He shook Blake's hand before adding, almost as an afterthought,"And don't flatter yourself. You're my last card today only because my usual one is grounded for reasons you can understand. Good evening, Lady Mary."

"A pleasure as usual, Mr McDonald," she replied, all charitable thoughts she'd had about him once again dissipating.

The presumption of the man! She supposed, if she was honest, she could see how it might appear to him that she was using Richard to avoid an uncomfortable situation-and perhaps she did need a bit of space before she went to him-but to say so? In front or Charles?

Yet...as she watched him go...she couldn't deny that he had knocked the wind out of Charles' sails a bit with regard to their debate.

Leave it to Richard to have friends as perplexing as he was.

Blake looked up at his companion apologetically.

"Now I feel like a scolded child," he sighed. He'd gone too far, he knew it, and the newspaperman's intervention, whatever his true motivations were, had saved him from being even more idiotic. "Is he always like that?"

Mary nodded.

Charles leant over the railing, his stare fixed on the fascinating bald patch of some Tory deputy down below.

"I'm sorry for my behaviour. I was out of line. Shall we meet again later this week?" He tried to smile as he looked up again.

If he wanted to win Mary's heart, he needed to put some order in his own emotions, and quick. Damned Ireland. Damned Irish.

Again, Mary nodded. He truly did regret what had happened between them today, and she was sorry, too, though precisely for what, she couldn't say.

"A few days to regroup, and battle can recommence."


	6. Hesitation waltz (part three)

Here's the final part, folks. But stay tuned, MrsTater and I may be able to update in a foreseeable future... Thanks for reading!

_London, Summer of 1923_

Richard stretched his arms and looked at the clock, his eyes blinking over the reading glasses perched on his nose. Half past six. Curiously enough, Keith had not come to pester him as he had done all week long. Maybe the man had got the message at last. A bit more than an hour ago, Miss Fields' temporary replacement had left for the week-end, and his part of the building was soothingly silent.

Nobody home, here or there.

With Shawsie gone to Brighton with the Vronskis, there was no point in going back to the townhouse, and Richard had made profit of the occasion to catch up on his paperwork.

He leaned back, sipping his scotch. The problem was that after three days of cramming, he had nothing left to do. In the past, before the marriage disaster-hell, before the whole engagement disaster and its consequences-he would have taken his coat, headed to the nearest jazz joint, and found some good company. Alas, long gone were those days, and the fear of being used again felt suffocating at times.

 _I'm a content man_. This he had repeated more than once to Mary in the past months. And he was, when his son was around. When he was not, it was another story entirely, and the notion of seeing Shawsie grow up, go to school, worse, to boarding school, university, was downright frightening.

What a sad bastard he had become.

Although Mary had been admitted to the building by a doorman and passed a dozen or more employees on the lower floors of the newspaper offices, working late on a Friday evening, the sight of Miss Fields' empty desk on the top storey made her feel rather like an intruder skulking about. A feeling with which she was becoming rather well acquainted since the incident with Freda Dudley Ward's love letter.

She stood in front of the oak paneled door of Richard's office, hand poised to knock, but hesitated. After Charles took her home that afternoon, she'd almost been tempted to heed Keith McDonald's advice and not go out again immediately. But Grantham House was so jammed with people at the moment, and she feared that seeing Tom at the dinner table would put her right back in mind of their unsettling debate. If Keith was so concerned about Richard that he'd looked to _her_ for help, she'd probably better speak to him sooner rather than later.

With that thought, she rapped her knuckles against the wood. Breath held, head inclined toward the door, she awaited a response from within.

The rap on the door was not that unexpected, still a bit too discreet coming from his probably exasperated friend. Richard did not even bother to divert his attention from the accounting balance in his hands. He was out of paperwork, but his collaborator was not, for now.

"Keith! Your opposition is duly noted and ignored. Go home."

"It isn't Keith," Mary called back through the door. "If it were, I'm not sure he'd give up his opposition so easily."

Now _that_ was a surprise. Still entranced by the particulars of his journalists' expenses during the latest Tour de France, Richard could not decide if this was a good thing or not.

He wasn't really not in the mood for company and pleasantries; not in the state for it, either. He hadn't had enough whisky to be drunk, but largely enough to loosen his tongue-a terrible combination with a foul mood. He would rather not repeat his disastrous performances from the last few weeks of 1919.

"Two options, one solution," he said. "You've met Keith at Westminster Palace or something happened with one of your stooges. In either case, you should go home."

That he was not wrong on either account made Mary grind her teeth and consider her course. Was she really in the mood for another quarrel? On the other hand, was she in the mood to quit without putting up might of a fight?

"You haven't seen me in two weeks. If you're going to order me out, you ought to at least do me the courtesy of doing so to my face so I have the chance to pummel you with my handbag."

Richard stopped his reading and felt a rueful smile form on his lips. Somehow, the threat did not sound empty. He shook his head in disbelief.

_I don't know how feminine I am._

"You know that this kind of threat doesn't really encourage me to abandon the safety of my office?" he replied, suddenly in a teasing mood, wanting to discover how much she could stand before taking the liberty of stepping into the office without being invited.

His precise tone of voice was muffled behind the door, but the words made her think she she might be wearing down his grouchy mood. That didn't mean she wasn't going to make him pay for it by forcing him to get him from his desk and open the door for her himself.

"I'm not sure how safe you are. Remember, I've committed the crime of breaking and entering."

"I've been rock climbing for decades, and the fire escape isn't that unreachable."

"How do you know I haven't already planned for that eventuality and sabotaged it?"

Richard's smile broadened, his paperwork forgotten.

"As surprisingly athletic as you are, you aren't very comfortable with heights, don't you remember?"

Back in the summer of 1919, she had accompanied him on a hiking excursion. A sudden change of weather had forced them to abort their plan and choose a rather narrow, rocky path down which had paralyzed Mary. He had needed to carry her on a good hundred yards. much to her shame-and to his secret pleasure. These had been the good times, when he still had hopes.

The glare which Mary gave her side of the office door was not entirely playful. Perhaps she ought to change tacks and hit him with her purse after all.

She stayed the course, responding as she always had when he reminded her of that hiking incident which she would never, ever live down. "Ridden any horses lately?"

Richard raised his eyebrows at that and almost stood up. That was a low blow.

"Nope. Still have no use for the beasts. Still don't like them. Still allergic, as well."

This was starting to get ridiculous. She reached for the door handle, but did not go so far as to turn it.

"What about me?"

Richard did not answer immediately. Instead, he stood up and grabbed his jacket and hat, and started for the door, keys and wallet in hand.

"I always have a use for a good friend, thank you," he acknowledged as he opened the door, an embarrassed expression on his face. "Fancy some dinner?"

"I would, thank you." As they started down the darkened hall, Mary tried not to sound too smug as she added, "I told Keith I'd see to it you had some."

Richard turned around, more than a little surprised, as they waited for the lift. "Are you and Keith working in cahoots, now? Just my luck…" The bellboy opened the door for them, and he let Mary step into the lift. "Nosy bastard."

-/-

"Keith might be a nosy bastard," Mary said later, as she and Richard had coffee and dessert in his drawing room, "but I think we owe him a debt of gratitude for the apple crumble."

They'd gone to Richard's townhouse for dinner rather than a restaurant-after all, it would hardly do for her to be seen out with _two_ men in one day, even if two men were courting her on a regular basis and her relationship with _this_ one was strictly platonic. She'd expected to have to settle for a sandwich or an omelette, if he had eggs, but after their meeting at Westminster Palace, Keith apparently had enough confidence in her promise to look after Richard that he'd told Brooks his employer might actually be home for dinner for the first time in nearly a week

, so a hot meal had been waiting upon their arrival.

"Actually," she added, sipping her coffee, "I probably owe him for more than that. Not buying the Prince's letter from Mr Sampson, for one." She stopped short of blurting out about his intervention in her own personal debate.

"You do know that, if only he'd realized that your family was involved, he would have bought the letter just to spite your father?" Richard teased as he settled back comfortably in his armchair. "But you're right, Mrs McSinclair's crumble is to die for, as most of her cooking actually. If I don't don't take care, I'll require a fitting with my tailor."

If you added the fact that her employer's erratic hours never disturbed her, and that she was more than happy to indulge his nostalgia for scottish gastronomy, she was the perfect cook.

"You should taste her haggis. It was the dealbreaker for me when I hired her."

And her Scotch pie was not bad either, he mused as he thought to his now empty plate with regret. He hadn't realized how hungry he was today.

Mary suspected he was goading her about her Englishness, and was pleased to be able to say, honestly,"You know, I actually quite like haggis." At his incredulous look, she went on, "I was disappointed that we were finally at Duneagle after the War I was pregnant and hadn't the stomach for it." And had to miss the ghillies ball, too.

"You'll have to come back again before you head back to Yorkshire, if your suitors let you," he suggested, sipping his coffee. "It took me five years to find a cook whose recipe compared favourably to my mother's."

At the moment, haggis with Richard was a more tempting offer than seeing Charles again later in the week. But she didn't want to think about that right now.

" _Are_ you going to tell Keith?" she asked. "About missing an opportunity to embarrass the Earl of Grantham, I mean? It might be good revenge the next time he annoys you."

Richard sighed, amused at the idea in spite of himself. "I'd rather not. I'm known to hold grudges for a long time, but, compared to Keith, I'm really a forgiving man. Unlike me, he never explodes, but he never forgets. Never. He still blames you and your family for everything that happened… later on," he admitted a bit shamefully. "But I suppose that his intransigeance comes from his place as a powerless witness-just like I might not be wrong in thinking that my name is still banished from your father's table."

"You wouldn't be wrong," she said, and sipped her coffee. Against her will, her thoughts turned back to her argument with Charles. "Then again, you'd be surprised what Papa can forgive. He said he'd never welcome Tom back to Downton and now…"

"Life has a strange way of making us reconsider decisions supposedly set in stone, hasn't it?"

Richard drained the last of his coffee and put the cup on the table before settling back.

"Now, can you tell me what you're doing here? There's only place where you could have met Keith today. And as much as I respect your political interest, I don't see you going to Westminster on your own, which means you were accompanied, most probably by Mr Blake. Yet you are here, having dinner with a man who made it clear he was off the market for an undetermined duration." He finished his speech with an intent gaze, trying to decipher her tired expression. "Are you well, Mary? Are you content with your suitors?"

_Are you realizing why you can't choose between them?_

_I don't worry about your suitors,_ he'd said the last time they were together _. I worry about you_ Is this what he'd meant? He worried whether she was content?

_Am I content?_

Mary stared at the ring of coffee at the bottom of her cup as she contemplated her answer. She hesitated to give one-Richard had already read so much between the lines, and Keith, who hardly knew her, questioned her motives for being so ready to go to him.

"If I were, I'd have chosen one or the other already, wouldn't I?" She met his gaze and said, "Did that sound as terrible as I'm afraid it did?"

"Yes, it did," Richard admitted, his voice soft. "But these chaps asked for it, not realizing that they aren't competing against each other, didn't they?"

He checked the clock on the mantel, half expecting Mrs Mikhailkova to step down the stairs and announce that _Mr Alexander_ was ready for his bedtime story.

Tears burned at the back of Mary's eyes, but she willed herself not to let them fall.

"They want what I'm not ready to give, and what I want isn't fair to either of them," she replied. "I'm not cut out to be alone. And I feel that you...understand that better than anyone."

Wasn't that why they'd spent the most unromantic Valentine's Day in history together?

Richard answered with a pensive nod. To be completely honest, his friends and family kept on warning him, afraid as they were that she would use him once more. Yet, the truth was that this time, both of them were using the other.

"I do hope that I'm not stopping you from anything, though, that I'm not some kind of convenient shelter… like I used to be in the past. You know, when you couldn't have your cousin."

Being the alternative to Matthew Crawley, whether in the flesh or as a ghost, was tiresome.

 _I suppose you feel I've used you_.

Before she really knew what she was doing, she set her coffee on the table beside her chair and rose, her skirt swishing softly against the upholstery of an ottoman as she stepped around it to go to him. Standing in front of his chair, she clasped her hands together as if she were making a confession.

"Keith accused me of doing that. I hope I haven't made you feel that I was. It wasn't my intention. And your friendship certainly hasn't made things more difficult for me. If anything, it's made me see more clearly…"

Richard tilted his head sideways. He would be lying if he said he did not know where all of this was headed. Not so long ago, he would have indulged every second, shamelessly.

"Mary…" he warned, more feebly than intended. If a big part of him balked at the idea of being vulnerable again, with this woman in particular, another, smaller one had been aching for some intimacy, any intimacy, since the divorce. "I can't offer anything…"

"I'm not asking for anything."

Her pulse hammered in her wrist as she unclasped her hands, reaching out toward him. She ought to be ashamed of herself for Gently, she brushed her fingertips over his cheek, enjoying the prickle of his beard against her skin. He did not flinch from her touch, although his eyebrows did hitch upward, askance.

She amended, "Not for more than I can offer in return."

The touch of her fingertips was soft, and so tempting. He sat up, uncrossing his legs as he caught her slender wrist between his own fingers.

"If I didn't know better, I would think you're dangerously close to proposing an affair, Lady Mary," he whispered more rhetorically than anything, and invited her wordlessly to sit on his lap, one of the rare intimate gestures she had allowed him when they were engaged, and not for a very long time.

Mary felt a little breathless, both with the rush of intimacy as well as amazement at what she was agreeing to do; indeed, with what she had initiated. She ought to be ashamed of herself for doing so, for making it so transparent to him, but she was not. Richard wanted it as much as she did. She slid one hand over his shoulder, drawing herself closer against him, as the other brushed the hair back from his forehead.

"Perhaps you don't know me as well as you think," she murmured, and touched her lips to his.

_I clearly don't…_

He settled back into the armchair, drawing her with him, content to keep the kiss light, almost chaste. Her perfume, a bit heady, filled his nostrils. One of his arms went around her waist as the other hand cupped her thigh, his fingers stopping their progression just before the caress would become totally inappropriate.

It felt good.

At the close press of his arm around her, his fingers circling her thigh, she gave a shuddering sigh. To be wanted by a man...to be held in strong arms...This had long been her weakness. She gave herself over to it, holding tighter to his shoulder as she indulged the longings Tony had first stirred in her with that impassioned kiss, knowing that she could give Richard what he wanted from her. Comfort. Companionship. She matched the soft movements of his mouth, not pushing for more, remembering the tang of his cologne as she accustomed herself to the tickling of his mustache and beard as her lips brushed it. It was different to the kisses they'd shared so long ago, and she was glad. They were different. Yet there was familiarity, too.

And that was good.

For a little while, they were content in gentle exploration, soft kisses and caresses. He had let Mary's fingers undo the knot of his tie, open the top buttons of his shirt. She had not protested when his own fingers got bolder and slipped under her skirt, when his lips trailed moist kisses along her neck line. Only when the pressure in his groin became impossible to ignore did he interrupt another languid kiss.

"Shall we stop for now or...?"

Although Mary appreciated his attempt, even now, to give her an out, she had no intention of taking it. To put a stop to it now would be cruel to him, and to herself. She slid off his lap but took hold of his hand and gave it a tug.

"Or."

He lost no time in getting to his feet, and led her up the stairs.


End file.
